target-revenue/README.md

target-revenue

Status: Concept and specification only (Stage 0). Not production legal text. Do not attach TRSL to production software yet.

The Target Revenue Framework (TRF) is a phased software monetization system: a defined development Phase accumulates Development Credit and Remission Credit against an immutable Initial Target until the Milestone Release automatically converts to a permissive Future License (MIT or Apache-2.0). A Trust Service publishes manifests, ledgers, extensions, and attestations as factual evidence — it does not decide conversion.

Commercial beneficiaries fund the creation and early availability of a software improvement; once the declared target is satisfied, the governed release becomes permissively open source.

Terminology guardrail

Before conversion, software under TRSL is source-available with commercial-use restrictions. It is not Open Source under the OSI Open Source Definition (field-of-endeavour non-discrimination). After the Conversion Event, the Milestone Release is available under the declared OSI-style Future License.

State	Accurate label
Pre-conversion, noncommercial	Source-available (permitted uses)
Pre-conversion, commercial	Commercially licensed / entitlement required
Post-conversion	Open source under Future License

Reading order

1. INTENT.md — durable purpose and design principles
2. SCOPE.md — what is in scope now vs later maturity
3. specs/TargetRevenueLicenseConcept.md — normative concept draft (ultimate source; governs if it and the extracts below ever diverge)
4. specs/ProductRequirementsDocument.md — goals, FRs, roadmap
5. specs/TechnicalSpecificationDocument.md — schema field tables and boundaries
6. specs/OpenQuestions-WorkingDefaults.md — provisional Stage 0 defaults

Exploration transcript (non-normative): history/260728-InitialExploration.md
Program assessment: history/260728-SWOT-Assessment.md

Normative documents (day-to-day reference)

Extracted and stabilized from the concept draft under workplans/TREV-WP-0003-normative-core-extraction.md (T01–T05 done; T06 human review still open — see that workplan). Use these for terminology, not the concept draft's prose, in ordinary implementation work:

Document	Covers
specs/TargetRevenueFrameworkCore.md	Seven core terms, target formula, five-verb lifecycle, nine core rules, foundational invariants
specs/PhaseManifestSpecification.md	Phase Manifest field tiers and validation rules
specs/TargetLedgerSpecification.md	Ledger entry types, hash chain, Outstanding Target fold
specs/MonetizationExtensionSpecification.md	Six-field extension contract, registered vs. canonical

Forbidden synonyms: do not treat undifferentiated "revenue captured" as equivalent to Development Credit (see CONTRIBUTING.md § Terminology); do not call pre-conversion software "Open Source" (see the guardrail table above).

TRSL license candidate

specs/TargetRevenueSourceLicense-V1C1.md is the first candidate written as actual operative license text (Version 1, Candidate 1) rather than a bracket-annotated skeleton — accepted by the maintainer 2026-07-29 as adequate briefing material for counsel, but still preliminary, not final, not for production use (specialist legal review and full Appendix A resolution remain outstanding; see the notice at the top of that file). It is grounded in the prior-art and jurisdiction research archived under history/260729-TRSL-*.md, and supersedes the earlier skeleton now archived at history/260729-TargetRevenueSourceLicense-Draft.md.

specs/TargetRevenueCommercialUseAgreement-V1C1.md is the companion Commercial Use Agreement template the License refers to but does not itself set terms for — same preliminary-candidate status, but less mature than the License: it had no dedicated prior-art research pass, and its Section 13 (Indemnification) is deliberately left unwritten rather than guessed.

Enforcement Network concept

specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md is a new, separate concept (2026-07-29): independent, locally-licensed Enforcement Partners pursue unauthorized Commercial Use in their home jurisdiction for a share of Recovery, so License §3 enforcement scales without the Licensor litigating everywhere directly. The central open risk is that lawyer contingency fees are not legal everywhere — Germany notably restricts them — so the concept requires a jurisdiction-conditional Litigation Funder/Local Counsel structure, not a single global fee mechanism. Backed by workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md, now finished (all 8 jurisdictions plus mechanism design and the human-gated synthesis, accepted 2026-07-29 — see history/260729-TREN-*.md). Findings: 50% is only exactly valid in the UK; most jurisdictions cap lower (18–35%) or ban direct lawyer contingency outright (Germany, India); India cleanly confirms the split-role model is both necessary and legal there; Japan's fee-splitting rule means even the split-role fallback needs jurisdiction-specific structuring, not just an availability check.

The concept's §13 now defines a Global Contingency Share Determination Rule, sequential rather than a "pick the higher number" calculation: (1) 50% where an outcome-contingent fee is lawful at that level; (2) else the jurisdiction's own lower lawful cap; (3) else — where no outcome-contingent fee is lawful at all (Germany, India) — no Contingency Share, and instead a non-contingent Standard Financing Amount (a fixed sum, paid regardless of outcome, defaulting to $1,000 local-currency-equivalent, recalculated annually, announced by 31 July for the following 1 January) toward the cost of bringing the case. Because it doesn't depend on winning, it isn't a contingent fee at all — a deliberate fix after an earlier draft's "fixed bounty" framing was still outcome-contingent (paid only on success) and so would not have escaped prohibitions like India's Rule 20 ("a fee contingent on the results of litigation"). §13.0 also makes explicit that none of this creates a right to sue — pressing charges remains exclusively the Licensor's decision; the rule only makes a ready, low-friction default available once that decision is made.

Repository layout

Path	Role
INTENT.md	Stable purpose (change rarely)
SCOPE.md	Living Stage 0 scope
specs/	Concept source, product/tech specs, working defaults, and normative extracts
workplans/	Active delivery plans
history/	Dated non-normative exploration and assessments
examples/	Golden Phase packages (phase-001, from WP-0002)
schemas/	Machine-readable JSON Schemas (WP-0002)
src/target_revenue/	Pure Python validators, hash chain, Outstanding Target fold, conversion detection (WP-0002)
docs/adr/	Architecture decisions; ADR-0001 (Stage 0 library stack) accepted 2026-07-29

spec/ vs specs/ (resolved 2026-07-29): the concept document originally lived under a separate singular spec/ directory, which history/260728-SWOT-Assessment.md flagged as a "perpetual footgun." It has been merged into specs/ alongside the product/tech specs and normative extracts — there is now one specs directory for the whole repository. The historical split, and the decision to merge it, remain visible in history/260728-SWOT-Assessment.md (unedited, as a dated record) rather than rewritten here.

Active work

Workplan	Focus
TREV-WP-0001	Prior-art research → TRSL V1C1 license candidate — finished, accepted by the maintainer 2026-07-29
TREV-WP-0002	Schemas, pure Outstanding Target fold, golden fixture — finished
TREV-WP-0003	Extract stable normative core docs — finished, reviewed and accepted 2026-07-29
TREV-WP-0004	Global jurisdictional research backing the License/CUA candidates — finished, T10 synthesis accepted 2026-07-29 with alpha/beta working defaults (full legal review deferred until out of beta — see SCOPE.md §1)
TREV-WP-0005	Enforcement Network legal feasibility research — finished, T10 synthesis accepted 2026-07-29 on the same alpha/beta basis (Japan's Article 12 risk remains explicitly unresolved)
TREV-WP-0006	Hosted Trust Service reference implementation (PRD Phase 4b) — finished, all 9 tasks done (Postgres-backed registries/ledger/metrics/attestation/breach-record, ADR-0002 accepted, onboarding CLI, hosted conformance suite)
TREV-WP-0007	Degeneration policy + canonical monetization profile catalog — finished, all 4 tasks done. trsl:policy:linear-longstop-v0 confirmed 2026-07-29 as the v1 norm for the first pilot cohort; progress-paused-longstop-v1 named as the next iteration, not yet adopted
TREV-WP-0008	Governance formalization + pilot rollout across coulomb-loop/net-kingdom/helix-forge/railiance-* — active; T01 (Licensor: Binky Hedgehog GmbH), T02 (candidate survey), T03 (draft pilot manifests), T04 (CLA draft) done; T05 (go-live gate, human decision) remains todo by design

Hub index: WORK-RECORDS.md · brief: .custodian-brief.md

Stage 0 library (schemas, pure fold, validators)

WP-0002 delivers an offline, dependency-light library — not a hosted Trust Service (SCOPE.md §3). It validates the schemas in schemas/, computes the pure Outstanding Target fold, verifies the SHA-256 hash chain, and checks Monetization Extension conformance.

pip install -e ".[dev]"
python3 -m pytest tests/            # 32 tests, no network required
python3 scripts/generate_golden_phase.py   # regenerate examples/phase-001/ledger.json

The implementation stack (Python, jsonschema, pytest, hatchling) is recorded in docs/adr/ADR-0001-stage0-library-stack.md, accepted 2026-07-29.

What this repo does not claim yet

• Final legal license text or enforceable TRSL
• A running production Trust Service
• A finalized degeneration formula (research + working defaults only)
• That any real product Phase is governed by TRF today

See SCOPE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Repository contents are under MIT No Attribution unless a file states otherwise. That is the license of this repository, not the Target Revenue Source License for third-party software.