# ACES revision 0.2.1: licensing and governance

**Effective legal framework: version 1.0, 5 November 2026.**

Technical baseline: `ACES Spec V0.docx`, version 0.2, dated 21 September 2026.  
Baseline SHA-256: `766708d2e9f17fc7858d94903b87916581b471fa5c59109ebfc4fc6c1dd6a2c8`.

## Changes

- Section 9 establishes the specification license, code-license boundaries, ownership and attribution, membership/contributor acceptance, patent notices, identity, release governance and distribution disclaimer.
- The legal framework is effective from 5 November 2026, with adoption and initial acceptance recorded in `Notices.md` on Reuven Farchi's confirmation and publication instruction. The earlier preparation-only package is superseded by this operative edition.
- `MEMBERSHIP.md` incorporates contributor acceptance as a condition of membership. `CONTRIBUTOR-AGREEMENT.md` is an operative agreement, not an unsigned form that every existing member must complete again.
- Reuven Farchi's acceptance covers his existing original technical contributions and the designated code examples. Other current members' acceptance is recorded on the coordinator's confirmation, without fabricating individual signatures or assigning authorship to them.
- `LEGAL.md` provides a public document index. Companion policies state effective terms and practical contribution, notice and approval procedures.
- `LICENSE.md` remains byte-for-byte identical to the supplied upstream CSL 1.0. The official SPDX identifier `Community-Spec-1.0` is used in the licensing guide. The Apache license text is unchanged.
- The specification is supplied in Word and matching Markdown. The legal framework is effective independently of the specification's technical working-draft status.

## Preserved

Technical wording in Sections 1-8, Section 10, Annexes A-F and the contact details is unchanged. No connector geometry, electrical requirement, transport dependency, passive-adapter behavior, execution semantic, EDS, example, schema, conformance category or architectural boundary is changed. Existing technical example version strings, schema identifiers and dates are retained.

No technical Approved Specification designation, trademark registration, product certification, ownership transfer, website deployment or public-disclosure timestamp is invented by this revision. Document revision 0.2.1 remains the licensing-only revision of technical baseline 0.2.