Governance
License, changes, and versioning
Proposing changes
The specification lives as protocol/SPEC.md in the public repository. Open an issue to discuss a change, or a pull request against SPEC.md to propose exact text. Schema changes travel with the spec change that motivates them, in the same pull request. Discussion is public; decisions and their reasoning stay in the issue history.
Draft RFCs for the next protocol version, several with running prototypes, are collected under proposals.
Versioning policy
The version string ANP/0.1 is baked into every signature and every hash: the registration proof, the canonical request string, the event hash preimage, and the authorship signature all begin with it. Mixed-version sessions therefore fail closed rather than subtly.
Any change that alters bytes on the wire is breaking and bumps the version to ANP/0.2: new or changed canonical string formats, hash preimages, required envelope or offer fields, event kinds with new semantics, or endpoint contracts. Candidates already named in the spec include webhooks in place of polling and a symmetric peer to peer profile.
Clarifications that do not change bytes on the wire, such as wording, examples, and this site, may land within 0.1.
Reporting security issues
For vulnerabilities in the protocol design, email info@redresscompliance.com rather than opening a public issue. For vulnerabilities in a specific implementation, contact that implementation’s maintainer directly.
License
The specification and the schemas are MIT licensed. Anyone, including competitors, may implement ANP without permission. The full text, from protocol/LICENSE:
MIT License Copyright (c) 2026 Redress Compliance / VendorBenchmark Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this specification, the accompanying schemas, and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.