Implement 0361: voice as the complement to exit — the Rule Change Proposal process

[crs48]

Implements exploration 0361 — all 6 implementation and 5 validation items.

The core change

GOVERNANCE.md legitimated BDFL by pointing at exit: "you can fork the code or re-implement the protocol." That is the posture Hirschman warns degrades quality — when leaving is the only move, the quality-sensitive members go first and quietly, and you lose the customer and the signal. Exploration 0358 flagged it and deferred it here.

Ostrom's design principle 3 supplies the missing half, and the important detail is what it does not require: not a vote, not consensus — a path. That is what makes this implementable at current size.

So BDFL now rests on three things rather than one:

1. The right to leave. MIT code, open protocol.
2. The right to be heard, on the record. Anyone affected by an operational rule can propose changing it and gets a public written answer with reasoning.
3. This document commits to growing past BDFL on the triggers below.

What landed

The process — docs/RULE_CHANGES.md. Defines an operational rule (binds non-maintainers · changed by maintainer commit · enumerated), lists the six in-scope rules from the exploration's inventory, and states what is out of scope with reasons (protocol → XPP, conduct, trademark, security embargoes). Anyone affected may propose — explicitly including self-hosters and plugin authors who have never contributed code.

The commitment — every RCP gets a public accept / decline / defer / redirect with reasoning within 30 days. Set generously on purpose: a missed window is worse than no promise, so "deferred, here's why" counts as a response.

The intake — .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/rule-change.yml, modelled on the XPP template: which rule, what change, who is affected, what breaks if we do nothing.

The record — docs/decisions/rule-changes.md, append-only, seeded with four real decisions back-filled from the exploration record and clearly marked retroactive:

	Decision	Outcome
RCP-0001	"No context capture" added to Charter §6	Accepted
RCP-0002	"No marketplace self-preferencing" added to §6	Accepted
RCP-0003	Relicense the core under GPL/AGPL (0345)	Declined
RCP-0004	Charge for admission to the xNet Index (0365→0366)	Declined / withdrawn

Two declines and a reversal, because a log of only the accepted proposals is marketing. RCP-0004 is specifically a lane we proposed and then refused — under the append-only rule both stay visible.

The receipt — a governance-rule-change-path claim in the claims ledger asserts all three surfaces exist and that the log still matches **Declined**, so the honesty cannot be edited out. Verified it bites: deleting the log fails that claim and only that claim.

Cross-links — Charter §6 and the ECONOMICS Moat Register now each name themselves as in-scope and point at the path. §6's covenant is answerable rather than merely stated; a covenant only the covenantor may amend, silently, is a preference.

Scope discipline

Not a vote, not a veto, not a foundation. The BDFL still decides — what is removed is the ability to change a rule that binds other people without saying why, in public, on the record. Options C (advisory council) and D (foundation now) were declined as premature: both need a constituency that does not exist yet, and 0241 stages D on triggers we have not hit.

Verification

• Claims ledger green (9 tests); negative test — removing the decision log fails governance-rule-change-path and nothing else
• pnpm typecheck — 97/97
• pnpm lint — 0 errors
• check-humane-patterns — 2266 files OK
• All relative links in the five touched docs resolve; issue-template YAML parses and validates
• README → GOVERNANCE → RULE_CHANGES is two clicks

No changeset: the only packages/* change is a test file.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Note: an earlier revision of this branch also carried fixes for four unrelated CI failures on main (the @xnetjs/social browser-bundle break, a vitest alias gap, a missing /post/ route prefix, and seven unformatted files). #578 landed equivalent fixes independently while this was open, so those commits were dropped and main merged in. The diff here is now purely the 0361 governance work.

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

Preview removed for PR #579.