RFC-0005: one-person-one-vote community governance

[zoahdev]

Summary

This proposal begins KineGrant's transition from founder/committee-weighted governance to equal, one-person-one-vote community governance.

It adds:

• KGP-RFC-0005 in English and Chinese;
• equal voting membership earned through a free, verifiable contribution or substantive review;
• no founder, donor, vendor, or high-volume-contributor veto or extra vote weight;
• a five-seat elected, term-limited, recallable Community Council that administers votes but cannot decide them;
• permissionless working groups;
• public appointment and removal of maintainers;
• a narrow emergency-security path with mandatory public disclosure and ratification;
• explicit fork rights if administrators refuse to execute a valid vote;
• bilingual contributor onboarding plus Community task and Community vote issue forms.

Why this is a draft

The accepted charter requires governance amendments to use the RFC process. This PR therefore does not claim that the new system is already active. It should remain open for at least 14 days, collect objections and amendments publicly, and then follow the current acceptance process. If accepted, RFC-0005 dissolves founder-only normative authority and opens the first Community Council election.

Review questions

1. Is one verified contribution or two substantive reviews a fair, accessible membership threshold?
2. Is a three-person minimum quorum safe enough during bootstrap?
3. Should inactive membership expire after 12 months with easy renewal?
4. Should elections use approval voting or STV when more than five candidates stand?
5. How should duplicate pseudonymous identities be disputed without requiring legal names?

Validation

• GitHub issue forms parse as valid YAML.
• Full repository suite: 495 passed, 7 skipped, 9 subtests passed; one throughput assertion measured 4962.4 ops/s against a 5000 threshold on the first run and passed on immediate isolated rerun. The change is governance/docs/forms only.
• git diff --check passes.

Compliance

No token, fundraising mechanism, financial right, membership fee, or legal entity is created. Membership is free, non-transferable, and carries one governance vote only.

[zoahdev]

Public review window

RFC-0005 is open for public review from 2026-08-29 through 2026-09-12 (UTC), a minimum of 14 days.

Please review the proposal rather than only voting on the title. Useful comments include:

• SUPPORT, OPPOSE, or AMEND, with a short rationale;
• a concrete anti-Sybil or accessibility failure case;
• a proposed edit to membership, quorum, election, recall, emergency security, or fork rules;
• a conflict-of-interest disclosure (none is acceptable);
• willingness to join one of the six permissionless working groups.

This thread is a comment and amendment window, not a claim that RFC-0005 is already accepted. Exact votes and minority positions must be preserved in the final decision record.