Governance

OASA starts founder-led and hands decisions to member councils as it grows.

Phases

Phase	Trigger	Who decides
1. Founder-led	Now	The founder, with member input
2. Advisory councils	About 25 active members	Councils advise; the founder has final say
3. Council-led	About 100 members and multiple chapters	Councils decide in their areas; the founder chairs Core and sets vision

Founding documents

• Charter: purpose, principles and how decisions are made.
• Bylaws: councils, voting, terms and amendments. The nonprofit needs bylaws and a board anyway.

Both are being drafted.

Councils

Each council has 3 to 7 people, drawn from Lead and Core members, with 1-year terms.

Council	Responsible for
Core	Direction, official projects, moonshots, Lead and Core promotions
Technical	Standards, tech tree, architecture
Security	Red team, security reviews, incident response, internal security
Chapters	Chapter rules, new chapters, makerspace partnerships
Academy	Courses, training, badges, school outreach

Decisions

Size	Process
Small	The project lead decides
Medium	A council or lead decides, and posts it publicly
Large (new standard, moonshot, rule change)	OASA Proposal
Foundational (charter, core principles)	Proposal plus two-thirds of Core

OASA Proposals

1. A Builder or above writes the proposal.
2. It stays open for discussion for about two weeks.
3. The council votes by simple majority.
4. The decision and the reasons are published.

Founder veto

In later phases the founder keeps a veto on changes to the core principles (encrypted always, decentralized, open by default and the rest), so the mission can’t drift.

Board and company

• The nonprofit board holds legal and financial responsibility. It stays small.
• The company (OASA Engineering) has separate ownership and leadership.
• A conflict-of-interest policy applies to anyone in both, and major agreements are disclosed.

Note

The member thresholds, council sizes and terms, and the veto scope are defaults. We will revisit them as we learn.