A standard is only trusted if it belongs to everyone. This charter states, in plain terms, how the Causal Seal stays neutral — and what would make you right to walk away if it ever stopped.
The specification is published under CC BY 4.0 and the reference implementation under the MIT license. Anyone may read it, implement it, verify seals, and build tools — commercially or not — without a license, a fee, or permission. Implementing the format is, and will remain, royalty-free.
The standard names no preferred vendor. Any organization may build a conformant emitter or verifier. Where a reference implementation is cited, it is cited as an example that exists in production — never as the one you must buy. Verification never requires trusting any particular company: it is a public computation you can run yourself.
Checking a seal's integrity requires nothing but the seal and open, published rules. It needs no access to any model, no online service, no account, and no gatekeeper. The free browser verifier runs entirely on your device and sends nothing anywhere.
Every emitter must publish a dictionary giving the meaning of each parameter it seals — so audits are possible. Emitters need not disclose how they compute those parameters; the engineering of good governance is where implementers legitimately compete. The standard governs the envelope of proof, not anyone's engine.
The specification is versioned and archived with a permanent DOI. It is currently a v1.0 draft, stewarded by its editor and open for public review. As adoption grows, stewardship is intended to broaden — toward a multi-stakeholder body and, where useful, formal standardization — rather than to concentrate.
Hold us to this: if the format ever becomes pay-to-implement, if verification ever requires a specific vendor's service, or if the specification is ever closed — the standard will have betrayed this charter, and you should fork it. The license permits exactly that, on purpose.