membership authority

CURIE: gmeow:membershipAuthority
IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/membershipAuthority
Category: property
Defined by: gmeow:slices/versions
Box roles: RBox role (What is this?)

The agent or standpoint that asserts this version membership and its role — a project maintainer, a package registry, a publisher, a curator, or a self-asserting individual. NON-FUNCTIONAL: competing authority claims coexist without privilege (Principle 9). When the claim is promoted from a flat statement annotation, gmeow:accordingTo becomes the membershipAuthority of the relator.

Structure

Property shape: object property; gmeow:VersionMembership -> gmeow:Agent Sub-property of: gmeow:vantage

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:membershipAuthority from gmeow:VersionMembership to gmeow:Agent when the relationship itself belongs in the native GMEOW graph.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Release Channels

Source: slices/core/versions/examples/release-channels.ttl
Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-versions-examples-release-channels

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: versioning as an authority-scoped claim (Principle 10). A
# gmeow:VersionMembership is a reified Observation: it asserts that an entity
# (gmeow:versionMember) belongs to a gmeow:VersionSet with a gmeow:versionRole
# (canonical / stable / LTS / deprecated / yanked …) and a gmeow:versionScale
# (the size of the change), AS CLAIMED BY an authority (gmeow:membershipAuthority
# / gmeow:vantage). Membership is never overwritten: when a release's role
# changes (stable → deprecated), close the old membership's interval or mint a
# fresh one (P10). Here one release is canonical in the stable channel and, later,
# deprecated — both memberships coexist.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/versions/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

# --- The membership claim: 1.0.0 is the canonical, major release in the stable
#     channel, as asserted by the maintainer.
ex:canonicalMembership a gmeow:VersionMembership ;
    gmeow:versionMember       ex:release100 ;
    gmeow:versionSet          ex:stableChannel ;
    gmeow:versionRole         gmeow:roleCanonical ;
    gmeow:versionScale        gmeow:scaleMajor ;
    gmeow:membershipAuthority ex:maintainer ;
    gmeow:vantage             ex:maintainer ;
    gmeow:membershipInterval  ex:canonicalPeriod .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:vantage, gmeow:VersionMembership, gmeow:Agent

Usage Advice

Use when

Use to name the agent or standpoint that vouches for a membership and its role — the registry, maintainer, publisher, or curator whose claim it is, so that rival authorities can be told apart.

Avoid when

Avoid privileging one authority's claim over another (Principle 9); model each authority's view as its own membership rather than overwriting, and keep this property non-functional.

How to use

Set the asserting gmeow:Agent here; when promoting a flat statement, carry its gmeow:accordingTo onto this property as the relator's authority.

Examples

ex:m1 gmeow:membershipAuthority ex:pypi.