Governance

GRP is maintainer-led. Contributions are welcome; a formal community-review process is not a prerequisite for maintainer work.

Roles

Steward (Malacan, Inc.) — drafts the spec, maintains the open protocol tooling, and operates GRP Server Cloud, a hosted GRP operator. The steward holds no protocol privilege: any operator implements the same public spec and passes the same open conformance suite, and every host’s receipts are standalone-verifiable.
Implementers — anyone running a conforming room server. Any conforming server is a valid GRP host.
Contributors — anyone proposing changes through GitHub Discussions , Issues, or pull requests.

Changes and releases

Review the scope — describe the change, compatibility implications, and validation. Maintainer work can be prepared and reviewed locally; contributors are encouraged to discuss substantial changes before a large PR.
Implement and validate — behavior changes need tests, and protocol-affecting changes need a working implementation that passes the applicable conformance checks. New capabilities need explicit contracts and support boundaries.
Approve the release — record accepted protocol changes, versions, and compatibility in the specification changelog. Source publication, package publication, and hosted deployment are separate approval decisions.

Merges require maintainer approval. There is no mandatory public discussion or waiting period. Seek broader review when a change affects independent contributors or implementers. Local review does not mean publication.

What “protocol-affecting” means

A change is protocol-affecting if it:

Adds, removes, or changes a normative requirement
Changes the canonical scope-evaluation algorithm
Changes the receipt format in ways that invalidate prior receipts
Adds or removes a mandatory transport
Changes a mechanism’s deterministic behavior

Editorial corrections (clarifying prose, fixing typos, restructuring sections without changing requirements) are NOT protocol-affecting and ship in editorial revisions.

Later

Add formal community governance only when actual participation warrants it, not on a predetermined version schedule.