HAO Open Questions Register

A record of the contradictions and unresolved questions the source material carries, checked against where the corpus itself takes a position and where it stays silent.

1. Scope, method, and the central finding

This appendix is written from two staged extractions: 04-open-questions.md, which registers 17 questions across five clusters drawn from material outside the corpus — working notes on the ICN’s entities and the MMM (Members, Mission, Market — the ordering that puts members before mission before market) working documents’ own “Still open” sections — and the ## Still open section of 05-mmm.md, which independently traces the nine MMM-proper questions to the same three MMM source files. No upstream archive was reopened to write this appendix. Every value and every source path named below was checked directly against the primary file cited, not accepted on the strength of either staging summary.

The corpus discussed throughout is the HAO (Humanized Autonomous Organization) — the network’s coordinating framework — as recorded in ~/code/hao/docs.

Central finding. The staged extraction registers 17 questions across five clusters. Of those 17, the corpus takes a position on exactly two — entries 2 and 3 in §3 below — and in both cases the position is a specific number asserted with no recorded reasoning: the corpus states a 77%/23% Contribulo split throughout, without ever acknowledging that its own source material also carries a 77%/33% figure, and without citing a reason for adopting 23 in particular. On the other 15 of the 17, the corpus either takes no position that a targeted search could locate, or reaches only adjacent material that does not answer the question as framed.

Entry 1 has since moved. This register was written before docs/03-governance/ was built out beyond its overview, and the governance chapter now states the coordinating entity’s minimum voting share as its two sources give it. That entry is therefore partly answered, and its §3.1 record says so. The count above describes the corpus as it stood when this register was written; entries are expected to move as the corpus fills, and an entry that moves should be edited rather than deleted, so the record of what was once unsettled survives.

One further question, present in neither staging file, is added here as §8: whether “Mycorium” — a term dropped from the corpus’s working vocabulary and independently reused by chapter 09 in a different sense — is used consistently. It was flagged for this register by the lineage appendix (docs/appendices/lineage.md §5.7), not by the open-questions staging pass, and is verified independently against its three named sources in §8. With it, this register carries 18 questions across six clusters. The count of questions on which the corpus takes a position remains two: the Mycorium question is one the corpus does not resolve either, though §8 notes a way in which it differs from the other 17.

A closing entry, §9, records a citation-integrity task first registered in docs/appendices/references.md and now completed. It is not counted among the 18 questions because it is a corpus-maintenance record rather than an owner decision or a new contradiction.

On sourcing. Every “corpus position” statement below reflects a targeted search of ~/code/hao/docs for the specific terms and figures the entry names. Where a search returns nothing, that is reported as a search result, not as proof the topic is unaddressed anywhere in the corpus under different words.

2. Summary register

3. Cluster A — Ownership and control of incubated units

Five questions, tracing to two source lines: the earliest description of provide.io’s role as the Nucleus of the network, and a set of working notes titled “Still open” in ~/code/site-provide-coop/provide.coop/docs/icn/entities.mdx, itself flagged in its own text as reconstructed from notes that were never published.

3.1 Entry 1 — provide.io’s ownership or voting share in a Cell

Question. What share of a Cell (the earlier term for a UME — United Micro Enterprise, a small self-managing venture team of up to ~15 people) does provide.io hold?

Conflicting values, with sources:

• 50% — ~/code/provide.io/content/english/governance.md line 52: provide.io provisions and manages each Cell as a legal entity, and in return owns 50% of it.
• At least 50% of voting rights — ~/code/papr/misc/pio-001-p-context.md line 36: provide.io, referred to there as the Nucleus, is stated to hold at least 50% of the voting rights of all successfully incubated Cells, with the Cell’s member owners holding the remainder.
• 55% — cited only secondhand, in entities.mdx lines 122–124: the source states that one note gives 50% and another gives 55%, and observes that the two are not interchangeable — 50% cannot carry a vote alone, and 55% can. No document containing a standalone 55% figure was located in this extraction; entities.mdx states elsewhere that it was reconstructed from notes that were never published, so the 55% source may no longer exist as a separate file.

Corpus position. Partly stated, and only since this register was written. docs/03-governance/01-membership-and-quorum-rules.md §3.1.B now records the figure as the two sources it draws on state it — at least 50%, with the unit’s member-owners holding the remainder — and cites this entry rather than treating the question as closed. The 55% figure appears in neither of those two sources, so the discrepancy this entry registers is unresolved. When this register was first written no numeric ownership figure existed anywhere in ~/code/hao/docs, by a search for “50%,” “55%,” “at least 50%,” or “nucleus.” The one “nucleus” hit located — docs/11-deployment/05-iterative-scaling-phases.md line 12, duplicated at docs/humanized-autonomous-organization.md line 4105 — uses the word to describe a phase of trust-building, unrelated to provide.io’s role. The corpus does name “Majority HAO/UME Ownership” as a pattern (docs/04-economics/06-external-interface-economics.md line 41), but its own worked example cites the 77% Contribulo figure (entry 2, a different entity layer), not a UME-level number. A numeric threshold is specified only at the Contribulo/PMI layer — PMIs (a buffer company between the network and outside investors) must include HAO-aligned supermajority ownership, typically above 66% (docs/08-legal/04-public-market-interaction-framework.md line 42) — which answers a different question than this entry poses. No position taken on the UME-level 50/55/at-least-50 question.

3.2 Entry 2 — The Contribulo split that sums to 110%

Question. Does the stated Contribulo ownership split add up to 100%?

As recorded. entities.mdx lines 125–127: the source states that one note gives provide.io a 77% share of Contribulo held in perpetuity, and separately refers to a remaining 33% available for participation in public markets — a total of 110% — and records that no reconciliation of the two figures was ever established.

Root source of the 77% and 33% figures, both giving the same non-summing pair: ~/code/provide.io/content/english/governance.md lines 347 and 349, and ~/code/papr/coop-bi-003.md lines 17 and 19, which carries the identical wording as the prompt governance.md was drafted from — provide.io holding 77 percent of Contribulo in perpetuity under an unequivocal Operating Agreement, with the other 33 percent available for participation on public stock exchanges.

Corpus position. Takes a position, but not the one recorded above: ~/code/hao/docs states 77%/23% (summing to 100) uniformly, wherever a Contribulo split is given — docs/humanized-autonomous-organization.md lines 489, 1310, and 2784; docs/08-legal/04-public-market-interaction-framework.md line 35; docs/12-icn/05-public-market-interfaces.md lines 58–59; docs/02-structure/05-public-market-interfaces.md lines 47–48; docs/04-economics/06-external-interface-economics.md line 102. No file in docs/ acknowledges that a 33%/110% figure exists anywhere in the source material, or states a reason for adopting 23% instead. The correction from 33 to 23 is silent and unexplained within the corpus itself. See entry 3 for where the substitution first enters the source chain.

3.3 Entry 3 — The Contribulo perpetuity share: 77/23 vs. 77/33, and its chain of custody

Question. The same underlying figure as entry 2, recorded separately because the source chain shows where the discrepancy entered the record, not only that it exists.

Chain of sources:

• ~/code/papr/coop-bifurcate.md — the initiating prompt, requesting a bifurcation strategy; no percentages appear in it.
• ~/code/papr/coop-bi-003.md — the human-authored follow-up prompt, stating the 77%-in-perpetuity, 33%-for-public-markets figures (identical wording to governance.md).
• ~/code/papr/bi-gpt-r-003.md line 14 — a language model’s own restatement of that same prompt, which substitutes a different number without marking it as a change: it states that provide.io retains a 77% stake in Contribulo, with the remaining 23% available for public market participation. Nothing in the file flags the substitution or notes that the human prompt it restates gave 33.
• ~/code/provide.io/content/english/governance.md — carries the original 77/33 figures forward into the site content as it currently stands.

Corpus position. Adopted the 77/23 figure (entry 2’s citations) — the same number a language model substituted, unflagged, in bi-gpt-r-003.md years earlier — but hao/docs does not cite that exchange, or any exchange, as its source. No file in this corpus connects the 23% figure back to bi-gpt-r-003.md; the match may be coincidental, since 23 is simply the arithmetic complement of 77, rather than a traceable editorial decision.

3.4 Entry 4 — provide.io’s triple role as a conflict of interest

Question. Is it a conflict of interest that provide.io sets up each Cell, holds an equity and voting stake in it, operates it, and directs its profits to the ICN (the reference cooperative business network) — which in turn holds the controlling vote in provide.io?

As recorded, raised and left unanswered. entities.mdx lines 132–136: the source states this arrangement directly and records no answer to it. It separately notes that independent arbitration appears to be the available mitigation, while stating that the question needs review by someone qualified to give a considered answer.

Corpus position. A search of ~/code/hao/docs for “conflict of interest” returns no matches in the corpus proper. (The phrase does appear in this appendix’s own planning file, docs/superpowers/plans/2026-08-11-appendices-and-mmm.md; that file is project scaffolding, not corpus content, and is excluded from this result.) The corpus describes structural safeguards against a related but distinct risk — external capital acquiring control of the network — through Exit Protection (docs/11-deployment/02-provide-io-as-deployment-engine.md line 44) and golden shares and sunset clauses (docs/02-structure/05-public-market-interfaces.md line 118). Those guard against outside investors, not against provide.io’s own structural position as incubator, owner, and operator of the entities whose profits fund the entity that controls it. No position taken on the conflict-of-interest question as framed in entities.mdx.

3.5 Entry 5 — Whether provide.io should hold a majority in Cells at all

Question. Should provide.io’s controlling stake be fixed, or should it taper as a Cell matures?

As recorded. entities.mdx lines 128–131: the source states that early control provides stability but the same control constrains a Cell as it matures, records that a gradient — heavier control early, loosening on agreed milestones — was proposed, and states that it was never decided.

Corpus position. No milestone-based or gradient ownership schedule was found in ~/code/hao/docs for UME-level stakes (same search as entry 1). Because the corpus never specifies a UME-level ownership figure at all, it correspondingly never addresses whether such a figure should change over time. No position taken.

4. Cluster B — Membership

Three questions from ~/code/site-provide-coop/provide.coop/docs/mmm/01-members.mdx, “Still open” section, checked directly against that file. The file carries a working-document notice: not yet reviewed.

• Contribution assessment. How a member’s contribution can be assessed without the process becoming a performance review. Corpus position: not addressed. The phrase “performance review” now appears once in ~/code/hao/docs, in docs/03-governance/03-accountability-mechanisms.md §3.3.C, which names “Performance Review Teams” as one of five accountability bodies its MTU-sourced material states with no stated composition, appointment process, or procedure. That entry does not describe how a member’s contribution is assessed or bear on the tension this question poses between assessment and performance review; it names a body’s title and states that the source is silent beyond the title. This search no longer returns zero hits, and the result is recorded here so the register stays accurate, but the question itself remains open.
• The membership floor. What a member is guaranteed regardless of how much they have contributed; the source states that a floor should exist and has not been set. Corpus position: not addressed. A search for “floor” now returns one hit — docs/13-member-trust-union/09-physical-branch-model.md states that compensation rests on a living-wage floor for all contributors — but that floor is contribution-linked staff compensation, not a guarantee attaching to membership regardless of contribution, so it does not answer the question. The hit is recorded because it postdates this entry.
• Cross-unit membership relations. (Partly touched since this entry was written: docs/03-governance/01-membership-and-quorum-rules.md §3.1.B states that a unit’s member-owners carry the same privileges network-wide, not only within their own unit. That addresses standing across the network; it does not address the question below, which is about members of different units working inside one shared venture.) How members of different Cells relate to each other inside a shared Cellular Venture — a SEP (Strategic Enterprise Partnership), a joint venture between teams, in current terms. Corpus position: partially adjacent material exists — SEP governance specifies a double-consent protocol (all members plus a HAO coordination representative) for capital allocation and role changes (docs/11-deployment/04-sep-structuring.md line 58) — but this specifies a voting mechanism, not how membership weight or identity carries across UME boundaries inside a shared SEP. Treated as not clearly resolved, not as adopted.

5. Cluster C — Mission

Three questions from ~/code/site-provide-coop/provide.coop/docs/mmm/02-mission.mdx, “Still open” section, checked directly against that file.

• Mission authorship. Whether a unit’s mission is written by the unit itself or by whoever established it.
• Mission revision. What happens when a unit judges its own mission to have been wrong.
• Inter-unit overlap. How much overlap in mission between units is healthy activity versus waste.

Corpus position, all three. ~/code/hao/docs discusses Mission Drift Detection at length as a risk to monitor and mitigate (docs/humanized-autonomous-organization.md line 6352 and elsewhere), but this addresses drift away from a mission that is assumed already settled. It does not state who has authority to author or revise that mission, and it does not address the inter-unit overlap question. Not addressed.

6. Cluster D — Market viability

Three questions from ~/code/site-provide-coop/provide.coop/docs/mmm/03-market.mdx, “Still open” section, checked directly against that file.

• Assessment window. How long a new unit is given before its viability is assessed.
• Subsidy authority. Who decides to sustain a strategically important but underperforming unit, and on what authority.
• Outside investment. How the entity structure handles a unit that wants outside investment. The source’s own text points this question back to the entity-ownership questions in §3 above, stating that the ownership figures there are unresolved.

Corpus position, all three. No explicit assessment window for a new UME was found in docs/06-lifecycle/01-ume-lifecycle-and-transition-states.md, read directly for this check. A loosely adjacent concept, time-bound probation in place of punitive bans, appears in docs/13-member-trust-union/03-governance-and-risk-distribution.md line 113, but it concerns sanctions against individual members inside the MTU (Member Trust Union) — the network’s credit-union-like financial institution — not a new-unit evaluation period. No decision authority for subsidizing an underperforming but strategic unit was located. Not clearly resolved on any of the three questions.

7. Cluster E — Open-source maintenance

Three questions from ~/code/site-provide-coop/provide.coop/docs/story/the-open-source-cells.mdx, “Still open” section.

• Defining “critical.” Which projects count as critical, and who makes that judgment; the source states this is a judgment call with no neutral answer.
• Funding an orphaned critical project. What happens when a project is critical but no commercial actor wants to fund it. The source names the xz incident as exactly this case, and calls it the hardest to fund.
• Taking over maintenance. How a unit can take over maintaining a project it does not own without recreating the trust problem the arrangement exists to solve.

Corpus position, all three. docs/08-legal/03-commons-based-ip-and-licensing.md exists and addresses commons-based IP and licensing generally, but a targeted search of that file for “critical,” “orphan,” “unmaintained,” and “xz” returns no matches. Not addressed on these specific questions, so far as a targeted search can confirm.

8. Cluster F — Vocabulary: which sense of “Mycorium” the corpus intends

This question is present in neither staging file for this appendix. It was flagged for this register by the lineage appendix (docs/appendices/lineage.md §5.7) during work on that appendix, and is verified here directly against the three sources it names.

Question. “Mycorium” is used in two different senses in the material available to this corpus. Which sense, if either, the corpus intends is not stated anywhere, and the two uses are not reconciled.

Sense 1 — the earlier lexicon’s economic sense. In the dropped vocabulary recorded in docs/appendices/lineage.md §4 and §5.7, “Mycorium” named the whole network conceived as a self-organizing socioeconomic system modeled on fungal networks: interconnected, resilient, and able to draw on underused resources in existing markets. This sense is not used anywhere in the live corpus; a search for “Mycorium” at the time the lineage appendix’s staging extraction ran returned zero matches in docs/.

Sense 2 — chapter 09’s cultural and linguistic sense. docs/09-adversarial-analysis/01-threat-taxonomy.md line 42 and docs/09-adversarial-analysis/04-external-and-technical-vectors.md lines 99–101 use “Mycorium” as the sources’ term for the network’s evolving shared language and history, and identify it as the target of the threat pattern the chapter names Lexical Drift — a faction shifting the connotation of shared vocabulary over time, until the terms no longer constrain the conduct they were adopted to require. Both instances were read directly for this entry. Line 42 states that Lexical Drift’s source material names its target as the Mycorium, the sources’ term for the network’s evolving shared language and history. Lines 99–101 make the same identification and cite docs/appendices/lineage.md §5.7 directly as the record of the term’s two senses.

The two senses genuinely differ. Sense 1 is a structural and economic description of the network as a whole, modeled on a biological system. Sense 2 is a description of the network’s shared vocabulary and institutional memory. A network resembling a fungal network in its economic structure is a different claim from a network having a vocabulary that can drift. Neither source treats one sense as a specialization or a consequence of the other.

A nuance chapter 09 itself preserves. Chapter 09’s use of “Mycorium” reports what its own source material calls something — the text is explicit that this is the sources’ term — rather than a term chapter 09 adopts as live corpus vocabulary in its own voice. This distinguishes the chapter 09 usage from a case where the corpus had coined or endorsed the term a second time on its own authority; it reads closer to citing an external label than to redefining one.

Corpus position. No position taken. This entry differs from entries 1–17 in one respect: chapter 09 is the one place in the corpus that already names this exact tension. 04-external-and-technical-vectors.md lines 98–99 cite docs/appendices/lineage.md §5.7 directly and state that the corpus does not reconcile the two senses. That self-citation flags the ambiguity; it does not resolve which sense, if either, governs when the word recurs, and no source states one.

9. Citation integrity — verification completed

When this entry was registered, docs/appendices/references.md §3 recorded eleven unchecked defects: the wrong author for Slicing Pie, two Ostrom year-and-title problems, and eight identities that the staging pass could not corroborate. None had then been checked against a primary source.

Corpus position, updated 2026-08-12. The verification task is complete. Primary publisher, journal, DOI, institutional-repository, source-control, and permanent-revision records were checked for the 48 baseline works and four supplemental citations discovered during the occurrence audit. Slicing Pie is now attributed to Mike Moyer; Understanding Institutional Diversity is dated 2005; and the Governing the Commons conflation is corrected to the 1990 work and merged with its duplicate audit record. Of the eight identities the staging pass could not corroborate, six remain not verifiable within the bounded primary-source search and two are unsupported because official DOI or issue records positively contradict them. Their live references were removed rather than silently transferred to similar works. The full audit also found two other identities with unresolved primary records, bringing the final unresolved identity-or-access count to eight.

The wider audit also corrected additional metadata defects, removed unsupported uses, and narrowed claims that ran beyond their sources. docs/appendices/references.md §3 summarizes the outcomes, while docs/appendices/citation-audit.md preserves the record-level evidence, occurrence verdicts, and actions. This historical entry remains outside the 18 owner questions in §2 because it records a completed corpus-maintenance task rather than an owner decision.