An open standard, governed in public, on a published roadmap.
URML moves through five phases from a single-author draft to a fully-governed public standard. The spec, the RFCs, the decision history, and the charter are public from day one. The mark is not in use, and will not be until Phase 4.
Five phases. Boundaries are explicit; gates are public.
Four working groups. Four chair seats open.
Chairs are seated from organizations actively building or governing robots. Applications open at end of Phase 0, via GitHub Discussions.
Primitives WG
CHAIR SEAT OPENAdd / deprecate intent verbs. Profile extensions.
Compliance WG
CHAIR SEAT OPENPolicy DSL · regulator liaison · jurisdictional overrides.
Substrate WG
CHAIR SEAT OPENReference adapters: ROS 2 · PX4 · OPC UA · vendor SDKs.
Profiles WG
CHAIR SEAT OPENhome · drone · industrial · educational · research.
Register interest in a WG chair seat.
Seats are seated at end of Phase 0. This is non-binding interest, reviewed in the open. One-year terms, renewable, no fee, conflict-of-interest disclosure required.
Every decision, in the open, with rationale.
50 spec RFCs accepted or implemented, 10 in draft, 1 open. Every RFC has an author, a state, and a public comment period. The per-target Outreach RFCs (the large remainder of ~692 docs) are tracked separately in the outreach ledgers.
How an RFC actually passes.
Supermajority of seated chairs.
- Quorum 3 of 4 WG chairs present.
- Threshold 75% of present chairs approve.
- Veto Any chair vetoes with a written objection; opens a 14-day re-vote.
- Tie Phase 0/1: maintainer breaks tie. Phase 2+: rejected by default.
Disclosed, not avoided.
Chairs disclose any material interest in an RFC outcome (employment, equity, contracts, government affiliation) before the vote, publicly in the RFC PR thread.
Any decision affected by an undisclosed conflict is voided. DCO sign-off (not a CLA) keeps contribution provenance clean for a future entity split.
No mark in use. That's a feature.
Trademark posture
Through Phase 3, a registry listing does not grant any mark, badge, or right to claim certification. A federal-validation self-report is a reproducible factual artifact, not a third-party mark.
The "URML-Certified" mark is reserved for Phase 4, when independent labs run conformance and trademark policy is ratified.
Read TRADEMARK.md ↗- Spec stays Apache-2.0
Forever. See CORE_COMMITMENT.md. - Conformance stays free
Anyone can run it, no cost, no gate. - No vendor lock-in
Substrate-agnostic by construction.