Issue: New .NET Foundation Project Application

[cdcavell]

Project Name

AsiBackbone

License

MIT

Contributor

Christopher D. Cavell

Existing OSS Project?

Yes

Source Code URL

https://github.com/cdcavell/AsiBackbone

Project Homepage URL

https://cdcavell.github.io/AsiBackbone/

Project Transfer Signatories

• Christopher D. Cavell cdcavell@gmail.com

Description

AsiBackbone provides .NET governance primitives for policy decisions, audit trails, and acknowledgment workflows.

What are you hoping from the foundation

I am applying because AsiBackbone is intended to address a practical governance need I believe the software industry will increasingly face: how to make consequential application decisions more transparent, policy-aware, auditable, and accountable.

The project provides .NET primitives for policy evaluation, decision results, audit receipts, acknowledgment workflows, and capability-gated execution. My goal is not to claim that this project solves AI governance by itself, but to offer a useful, MIT-licensed foundation that others can inspect, reuse, improve, or adapt where it fits.

From the .NET Foundation, I am hoping for community visibility, technical feedback, open-source guidance, and alignment with established .NET project practices. I would welcome Microsoft, Foundation members, or the broader .NET community repurposing or building on any part of the work if it helps address real industry needs.

Name

Christopher D. Cavell

Email

cdcavell@gmail.com

GitHub Profile URL

https://github.com/cdcavell

Committers

Current commit/write access is limited to:

• Christopher D. Cavell — GitHub ID: cdcavell — contributing in an independent/personal capacity, not on behalf of an employer.

Automated services such as GitHub Actions or Dependabot may create checks or dependency-update pull requests, but they are not project committers.

Discord Ids

N/A at this time.

Primary maintainer:

• Christopher D. Cavell — GitHub ID: cdcavell

A Discord ID can be provided later if required for .NET Foundation maintainer communications.

Governance Model

AsiBackbone currently uses a maintainer-led governance model.

Code changes are proposed through GitHub issues and pull requests. Issues are used to describe bugs, documentation needs, design changes, and implementation tasks. Pull requests should reference the related issue when applicable and include a clear summary of the change, testing performed, and any documentation impact.

Proposed changes are reviewed by the project maintainer for correctness, maintainability, security impact, API stability, documentation quality, and alignment with the project scope. Automated checks, including build, test, documentation, and security-related workflows where applicable, are used to support review before changes are merged.

At this stage, Christopher D. Cavell (cdcavell) is the primary maintainer and final decision-maker for accepting changes. Decisions are based on technical merit, project fit, backward compatibility, and whether the change supports AsiBackbone’s goal of providing practical .NET governance primitives for policy-aware decision flow, auditability, acknowledgment workflows, and constrained execution.

New committers may be considered after a contributor has demonstrated sustained, constructive participation through issues, pull requests, documentation improvements, testing, or project support. Appointment of new committers will be based on trust, quality of contributions, understanding of the project direction, and willingness to follow the project’s code of conduct and governance practices.

CLA

• If already an OSS project, was a Contribution License Agreement in place for contributions accepted?

How does the project check who has signed one?

The project does not currently have a separate CLA process in place for accepted contributions.

At this stage, AsiBackbone is maintained by Christopher D. Cavell (cdcavell), and no external committers have been granted write access. If the project is accepted into the .NET Foundation, the project intends to use the .NET Foundation CLA process/automation for future contributions as required.

CLA Notification Alias

cdcavell@gmail.com

Select the Project Transfer Agreement model

Contribution

Repository Layout

No major repository layout changes are currently planned as part of joining the .NET Foundation.

AsiBackbone already uses a conventional open-source .NET repository structure, including source code, tests, samples, documentation, GitHub issue templates, pull request templates, CI workflows, release metadata, license, code of conduct, contributing guidance, and security policy.

The public GitHub repository will remain the primary location where development occurs. Changes will continue to be proposed and reviewed through issues and pull requests, including changes from the maintainer and outside contributors.

If accepted, I am willing to make any reasonable adjustments requested by the .NET Foundation to better align the repository with Foundation guidance, including updates to repository metadata, documentation, governance files, CLA automation, project transfer notices, or other standard onboarding requirements.

Eligibility Criteria

• The project is built on the .NET platform and/or creates value within the .NET ecosystem.
• The project produces source code for distribution to the public at no charge.
• The project's code is easily discoverable and publicly accessible (preferably on GitHub).
• The project contains a build script that can produce deployable artifacts that are identical to the official deployable artifacts, with the exception of code signing (Exception may be granted for strong name keys, though strongly encouraged to be committed. Exception relies on OSS signing being in the build script for public builds).
• When applicable, project must use reproducible build settings in its toolchain.
• The project uses Source Link.
• The project uses either embedded PDBs or publish symbol packages to NuGet (if applicable).
• The project code signs their artifacts as appropriate.
• The project organization has 2FA enabled. Requiring 2FA must be done as part of onboarding if not already enabled.
• Libraries that are mandatory dependencies of the project are offered under a standard, permissive open source license which has been approved by the .NET Foundation (exceptions include a dependency that is required by the target platform where no alternative open source dependency is available such as the .NET Framework or a hardware specific library).
• Committers are bound by a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and/or are willing to embrace the .NET Foundation's CLA when the project becomes a Member.
• The copyright ownership of everything that the project produces is clearly defined and documented.
• The project has a public issue tracker where the status of any defect can be easily obtained.
• The project has a published Security Policy.
• The project has a home page which provides high level information about its status and purpose.
• The project has a public communication channel where community members can engage with maintainers.
• The project has a publicly available location where members can review and contribute to documentation.

Describe why you are applying for Project Membership.

I am applying to add AsiBackbone to the .NET Foundation because I believe the project addresses an emerging need in the .NET ecosystem: practical governance primitives for policy-aware, auditable, and accountable software decision flow.

AsiBackbone is intended to provide reusable .NET building blocks for evaluating constraints, producing governance decisions, recording audit receipts, supporting acknowledgment workflows, and enabling capability-gated execution. The goal is to offer a useful open-source foundation that other developers, organizations, and the broader .NET community can inspect, reuse, adapt, or improve.

I am also applying because Foundation membership would help the project mature through community visibility, technical feedback, open-source guidance, and alignment with established .NET project practices. I am comfortable with the Foundation, Microsoft, and the broader community building on or repurposing the work where it can help address real industry needs.

Infrastructure Requirements Summary

AsiBackbone has minimal infrastructure requirements at this time.

The project is hosted publicly on GitHub. Source code, issues, pull requests, documentation, security policy, contribution guidance, and discussions are managed through GitHub. Builds and validation are handled through GitHub Actions using the repository’s existing workflow configuration.

Project documentation is published through GitHub Pages using the existing documentation site. NuGet packages are published to NuGet.org as part of the project’s release process.

No custom build servers, private hosting infrastructure, or special service hosting requirements are currently needed. SSL/TLS for the documentation site is handled through GitHub Pages. The project does not currently require Authenticode code signing, but I am willing to adopt .NET Foundation guidance for signing, release validation, CLA automation, or other onboarding requirements if needed.

Additional Notes

AsiBackbone may overlap conceptually with policy engines, authorization libraries, workflow systems, and audit/compliance tooling, but its focus is narrower and complementary. The project is intended to provide .NET governance primitives for consequential decision flow: policy evaluation, explicit governance decisions, audit receipts, acknowledgment workflows, and capability-gated execution.

The project should not be understood as an artificial intelligence engine, a completed AI governance solution, or an implementation of artificial superintelligence. It is a practical .NET package family inspired by governance and accountability patterns, with the initial goal of helping developers build more transparent, auditable, and policy-aware application workflows.

At this stage, the project is maintained independently by Christopher D. Cavell and is released under the MIT license. There are no known intellectual property, licensing, infrastructure, or third-party material concerns that I am aware of. I am willing to work with the .NET Foundation during onboarding to adjust repository metadata, governance files, CLA configuration, package metadata, documentation, or release practices as needed.

[cdcavell]

Project update:

As part of preparing AsiBackbone for possible .NET Foundation onboarding, I completed a repository-wide refactor to remove the CDCavell prefix from the public package IDs and namespaces.

The package family has moved from the previous personal-prefix naming pattern to the simplified project-centered naming pattern:

CDCavell.AsiBackbone.*  ->  AsiBackbone.*

This was done to better align the project with a neutral, project-oriented identity rather than tying the public API and NuGet package surface to my personal namespace.

Because this affects public NuGet package IDs and public namespaces, I treated the change as a breaking release and published it as 2.0.0.

The new AsiBackbone.* packages have now been published to NuGet, and the previous CDCavell.AsiBackbone.* packages are being deprecated as legacy packages with alternate package guidance pointing to the corresponding AsiBackbone.* replacements.

I also updated the related repository metadata, documentation, release notes, security policy, citation metadata, Zenodo metadata, template identity, and release validation guidance to reflect the new package identity.

The project remains independently maintained under the MIT license, and I am happy to make any additional adjustments to repository metadata, governance files, CLA configuration, package metadata, documentation, or release practices if helpful during .NET Foundation review or onboarding.

[irinascurtu]

Thank you for your application. The project committee reviewed your submission and we think the project needs more time to build community adoption. We encourage you to continue developing the project and growing your contributor and user base.