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Name Change
Effective November 1, 2026, the framework formerly called the Cognitive Commons Framework is called the Consensual Commons Framework. The acronym stays CCF. The CCRFC prefix stays. Both repository names stay. This is a proposed standard, not an adopted one.
Two reasons, in the author's own order. First, discovery. The phrase "Cognitive Commons" in an AI context already denotes Nolan Lovett's paper "The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons" (arXiv, July 2026, published in Human Resource Development Review), on AI depleting the shared pool of professional expertise. That paper is established — peer-reviewed journal, government work, months of social circulation — so anyone searching for this framework hits his paper first, and anyone hearing about this framework has to be told which one is meant. Finding this framework required already knowing it is this one, which is the opposite of how a standard spreads. The collision is effective, not intentional, and not legal.
Second, scope. The framework is a consent-governed commons generally, and AI chat data flow is its first application, not its boundary. The five tiers are consent classes; they do not care what the data is about. "Commons" in the new name is what leaves that door open.
Two other names were checked and not used. "Consent Commons Framework" is taken — a 2010 consent-licensing framework for clinical and educational recordings. "Consensual Cognition Framework" is free, and was considered, but it keeps "Cognition," the marker word of the collision, and drops the Commons lineage the framework stands on. It would have been a half-step from the collision, not a clean break.
No mechanism changes. No tier, class, flag, status code, or profile rule changes. The acronym CCF, the CCRFC prefix, the repository slugs (ccf, ccf-srs), the five tiers (UF/SO/CO/NK/NT), the flag-before-payload rule, the portable profile, and the Apache 2.0 license do not change. Profiles carrying the founding checksums keep working against the founding documents.
CCRFCs are immutable — a published CCRFC is identified by its sha256 checksum, and any edit invalidates it — so the rename is succession, not edits. Seven checksum-identified successor CCRFCs were filed, each superseding one founding CCRFC, name only, plus the short section stating what changed and why that the succession rule requires. The founding documents stay archived and findable, marked superseded-by in the store index, never edited, never deleted.
| Former document | Successor short checksum |
|---|---|
| CCRFC-000, CCRFC Format and Conventions | ab64f70bdb38f99d |
| CCRFC-001, Handling Tiers | 99a0b8696bf2aecd |
| CCRFC-002, Content Classes | 5c14b0ff2c4344f7 |
| CCRFC-003, Flag Wire Protocol | a4b34d3733ffc5c3 |
| CCRFC-004, Portable Profile | 210aeeb5d661703a |
| CCRFC-005, Egress Audit Record | 147408c60ac683e4 |
| CCRFC-006, Domain Flags | 640096260609ee5d |
Full former-to-successor checksum table and the renaming notice (checksum 7c306813ce4cab01, supersedes nothing) are in the repo: ccrfc-7c306813ce4cab01-renaming-notice.md and ccrfc-checksums.md. The whitepaper was republished as v2 under the new name, v1 staying as history. Companion documents (READMEs, onboarding) were edited in the ordinary way — they carry no MUSTs, so the name change there is ordinary edits.
The post-founding draft CCRFCs (Unknown-Handling, Title-Clarification, Format-Open-Questions) still carry the old name and update the founding documents. That is follow-up work, not part of this rename.
- "Consensual" carries a strong everyday association with sexual consent. In this framework it reads as consent-governed. Whether that association helps or hurts adoption is untested.
- The title form for checksum-identified CCRFCs (no frozen number) is not defined in the format successor's §3. The notice and successors use
"<Framework> - <title>"with no number. A later CCRFC SHOULD settle the form.
- Changelog: the 2026-11-02 rename entry, with filing detail.
- CCRFC Index: the spec documents, what each one governs, how to cite.
- Discussion announcement: CCF is now the Consensual Commons Framework (Announcements category)