The signed statement and proposed refinements

People should be able to tell what they are being asked to support. The manifesto remains the signed statement. This guide explains its reasoning and limits; it does not add new commitments to an existing signature.

Some limits deserve clearer wording in the statement itself. The three proposals below are substantive changes, published for consideration. They have not replaced the original principles, and the existing signatory list must not be read as endorsing them.

Principle 4: stop the protected action

The signed wording is:

A safeguard that cannot run must stop the work and say why. Protection that fails quietly is not protection.

“The work” is too broad. If a required publication-permission check cannot run, publication should wait. Work that is already authorized, such as drafting changes or investigating the check failure, can continue. A failed check governing access to the material must also block that access. In a system whose shutdown could itself cause harm, the appropriate safe response needs to be designed and authorized in advance.

Proposed wording:

When a required safeguard cannot run, stop the action it protects and say why. Any fallback must be deliberately designed and authorized.

This retains the prohibition on silently treating an unavailable safeguard as a passed check. It also makes room for a defined safe response instead of assuming that stopping everything is always safe. The chapter on safeguards examines the difference.

Principle 6: recoverability has limits

The signed wording is:

Archive first, delete second.

That is useful advice for a draft or project history that may be needed again. It is poor advice for information that should no longer be retained. A backup is still a copy, and putting it somewhere less visible does not settle whether keeping it is appropriate.

Proposed wording:

Make destructive changes recoverable when retention is appropriate. Do not preserve information that must be erased.

The decision about appropriate retention comes first. Within that boundary, a verified archive can protect against an accidental loss. The chapter on archiving and deletion explains both responsibilities.

Principle 11: sharing requires rights and judgment

The signed wording is:

Publish the reusable mechanism; keep personal and entrusted information private.

A mechanism can be reusable and still be unsafe to release or belong to someone else. Removing names from an example also does not necessarily remove the information that identifies a person or organization.

Proposed wording:

Share reusable methods when you have the right to do so and can do so responsibly; protect personal and entrusted information.

The proposal makes the conditions of sharing explicit. It does not turn a preference for openness into permission to release another party’s work. See the chapter on sharing methods for a worked example.

How the other principles are treated

The guide also qualifies the application of the other principles. Verification should match the consequence of being wrong. Lessons need review when conditions change. Human judgment requires actual authority and attention. A complete fix needs a defined problem, and portable work need not make every tool interchangeable.

Those explanations are open to challenge. If an explanation has to rescue a principle from its ordinary meaning, changing the principle may be more honest than asking readers to supply the missing qualification. The proposals above identify three places where the wording itself needs that work.

Publication record

September 26, 2026: this companion guide was published with explanations of all twelve principles, examples of their use and misuse, counterexamples, signing questions and the three proposed refinements above. The manifesto’s preamble, paired values and twelve signed principles were preserved.

A future substantive revision should retain the earlier statement and explain what changed. Support for an earlier version must remain distinguishable from support for a replacement. Publishing commentary cannot supply someone else’s consent to new wording.