Governance

Core Principles

• Members are chosen and promoted to various committees based on their actual contributions.
• Members work towards the overall health and adoption of a more open ecosystem and agnostic to interests of the companies they represent.

Contributors

• Open - Anyone can contribute but needs to sign a contributor license. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
• All code changes need to be approved by at least 1 maintainer elected by the respective Domain Tech Council (DTC), and all members of that DTC are cc’ed.

Maintainers

• Responsible for reviewing and approving code changes to ensure they align with the project's technical standards and governance principles.
• Build tools and documentation to facilitate adoption of the protocol.
• Domain Tech Council (DTC) can add, remove & nominate maintainers for their domain as needed.
• All code changes require approval from at least one Maintainer.

Domain Working Groups (DWG)

• Because the DTC cannot be experts in every field, Domain Working Groups (DWG) may be formed as a natural part of expanding the protocol.
• DWG are subject to DTC oversight - all DWG artifacts must be reviewed and approved by the DTC.
• Acts as the consensus venue for industry participants (e.g., multiple airlines) to agree on shared interoperability standards within the protocol, maintain the specific documentation and implementation guides for their domain's capabilities.
• A group of 3+ organizations can submit a charter to the Governing Council to form a DWG (e.g., "Travel WG"). Once chartered, the DWG has autonomy to define capabilities for their domain and submit for DTC approvals.

Domain Tech Councils (Domain TC)

• Members are responsible for building and maintaining core specification for the respective domain.
• Members are elected by the Governing Council (GC).
• Decisions are made with a majority vote.
• Any Domain TC member may request a review from the Governing Council at any time for any additional inputs.
• Members are elected by the GC every 6 months, based on their technical contributions towards the protocol. Members can be re-elected any number of times. See TC_ELECTIONS.md for more details.

Shopping Tech Council (Shopping TC)

• Responsible for building and maintaining core specification for the Shopping domain.
• Includes 16 members, 4 permanent members from each founding organization (Google & Shopify), each with 1 vote (total 8 votes).
• Includes 8 members from any organization, each with 1 vote (total 8 votes).

Food Tech Council (Food TC)

• Responsible for building and maintaining core specification for the Food Ordering domain.
• Includes 16 members, with 10 permanent members from founding organizations, 6 from Google, 1 from DoorDash, Toast, Square, Uber Eats each with 1 vote (total 10 votes).
• Includes 6 members from any organization, each with 1 vote (total 6 votes).

Governing Council (GC)

• Responsible for governance, overall health and adoption of the protocol.
• GC serves as the ultimate owner of all UCP assets. Google acts as the custodian of the UCP.dev domain, holding and managing it to foster adoption of UCP.
• Includes a total of 5 members.
• Includes 1 permanent member from each founding organization (Google & Shopify) each having 1 vote (total 2 votes).
• Includes 3 elected members from any organization, each with 1 vote (total 3 votes), elected by the permanent founding members of the GC based on their contributions towards the protocol's health and adoption. Elected members are re-elected annually and can be re-elected any number of times.
• Open elected seats may be filled at any time via GC election and approval. Google holds proxy vote for all open seats until Dec 2028 to facilitate rapid early stage growth & adoption of the protocol.
• Can add/remove DTC members via simple majority vote.
• Can elect new members to GC based on their ability to drive protocol adoption, represent key industry domains, and demonstrate commitment to open protocols.
• May choose to review and veto a DTC decision or recommendation.
• Decisions are made with a majority vote.
• May participate in any DTC.

Process for nominating new Domain Tech Councils (DTC)

• Submit a DTC charter nomination (using the DTC charter template) as a new issue in the UCP Issues tracker.
• GC reviews DTC charter and approves/rejects DTC nomination.
• GC opens up nomination for inducting DTC members, using the process specified in TC_ELECTIONS.md.
• GC elects and announces the new DTC members, finalizes the DTC composition and updates the governance documentation.

Communication

To ensure the protocol remains open and agnostic, all governance activities must be visible, accessible, and searchable. All communication that is intended to be public (concerning, e.g., adding a capability before creating an extension, debating one approach versus another, or announcements relating to upcoming launches, etc.) shall take place on a shared Google group with a mailing list. This includes discussion on enhancement proposals, announcements about official specification changes and final governance votes.

• DTC & DWG Meetings: Agendas should be posted 24 hours in advance. Minutes and meeting notes should be published to the repository within 1 week of the meeting conclusion. DTC reserves the right to redact or edit meeting notes as needed.
• Governing Council Meetings: Summaries of strategic decisions and budget allocations will be published quarterly (specific sensitive partnership discussions may remain private).