CDCF Governance Definitions

This document provides a shared vocabulary for the Catholic Digital Commons Foundation (CDCF) governance and vetting processes.

Foundation Roles

CDCF Board: The primary governing body of the Foundation.
TCSC (Technical and Canonical Standards Committee): The expert body that maintains vetting criteria and reviews project alignment.
Maintainer: An individual with write access to a project’s repository and responsibility for its technical and mission-aligned growth.
Contributor: Anyone who provides input, code, or documentation to a CDCF project.
Member: An institution (diocese, school, health system) that formally supports the CDCF.

Incubating: A project that has been accepted by the TCSC but has not yet met all criteria for graduation.
Active (Graduated): A project that has satisfied all 8 vetting criteria and is recommended for wide-scale deployment.
Retired (Attic): A project that is no longer maintained but remains available for reference.

Gate 1 (Incubation Acceptance): The first evaluation hurdle focused on mission alignment and core accountability.
Gate 2 (Graduation): The final evaluation hurdle focused on operational readiness and sustainability.
Mission Alignment: The requirement that a project’s purpose and operation be coherent with Catholic Social Teaching and the Church’s evangelizing mission.
Canonical Scope: The boundaries defined by Canon Law and the Magisterium regarding what technology can and cannot do (e.g., technology cannot simulate sacramental grace).
Subsidiarity: The principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority.
Human Accountability Architecture: A design requirement ensuring every consequential output is traceable to a named, responsible human being.
Governance-as-Code: The practice of expressing deployment policies as machine-readable, auditable specifications rather than static documents.