Interim operator
Handles legal authority, marks, infrastructure accounts, and release authorization until the new entity can lawfully receive them.
Governance / Bootstrap phase
Authority should be visible before it is distributed.
Hyphae Research Foundation is in formation. Today, project authority and legal authority have not yet transferred to an independent foundation. This page states the present arrangement and the work required to change it.
Present authority
Interim / Not incorporated
Celiums Solutions LLC is the interim organizer and custodian.
It funds and operates the initiative and retains current legal title and administrative authority until written custody records and separate transfers are complete. It is an incorporator only if formation filings name it, and it does not own a foundation. Contributor copyrights remain with their holders unless separately assigned.
The LLC will not receive charitable donations “for the foundation.” Commercial sponsorship may contract with the LLC; charitable support during transition requires a disclosed fiscal sponsor. Hyphae activity is maintained through separate internal accounting.
Bootstrap model
Maintainers
Review changes, enforce project contracts, publish decisions, and gate releases against each project's documented checks.
Contributors
Propose code, documentation, research, and governance changes under the repository's inbound licensing and DCO policy.
Decision flow
Public record before implementation.
Ideas may begin in Discussions. Official decisions live in tracking issues. Only decision:approved authorizes a pull request, and the issue records scope, acceptance criteria, risk, owner, reviewer, AI expectations, and expiry.
Maintainers seek rough consensus. Normal work requires one independent human approval. Security, durable state, contracts, kernels, releases, governance, and other changes classified as critical require two maintainers and the critical review controls. Material AI use is disclosed and reviewed under the target repository's risk policy.
No automation and no individual can silently become the project’s authority.
Formation ledger
F-01Select jurisdiction and legal form with counselOpen
F-02Incorporate and publish formation recordOpen
F-03Adopt bylaws and conflicts policyOpen
F-04Appoint independent board and officersOpen
F-05Execute trademark and asset transferOpen
F-06Transfer repositories, packages, domains, and signing identitiesOpen
F-07Adopt project charters and public maintainer rosterOpen
F-08Publish finances and lawful funding channelOpen
Decision standard
Public by default. Private by named exception.
Technical proposals, durable design choices, release decisions, and governance amendments should be discussed and recorded in public. Time-bounded exceptions apply to security embargoes, privileged legal advice, personnel matters, and confidential conduct reports.
Bootstrap roles now define contributors, triagers, reviewers, maintainers, area owners, release managers, security responders, and project leads. Permanent charters must still define peer appointment or election, terms, removal, quorum, voting, recusal, appeals, amendment, succession, and credential continuity. Until then, “community governed” would be an inaccurate claim and is not used.
The contribution system was derived from a dated review of Apache, Linux Foundation, CNCF, OpenJS, Node.js, Rust, Python, Kubernetes, Eclipse, Mozilla, and OpenSSF practices. Hyphae Research Foundation remains responsible for the resulting choices.
The formation ledger closes only when the authority and the evidence move together.