# Bootstrap-Then-Divest Is Only Credible With a Named Recipient ## Claim A company can legitimately bootstrap an open standard by running its central infrastructure alone at first, and the commitment to hand that infrastructure over means something only once it names the specific piece being given away and the specific entity receiving it. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - A named recipient — a Swiss nonprofit board, the IETF — makes the promise checkable; "staying open" does not. - The pattern is legitimate: early standards need someone to run the thing before independent adoption exists to sustain it. - The test arrives later, at the moment the divestment was supposed to happen, which is why the named date matters as much as the named recipient. - Applies to any consortium-bound standard that started inside one vendor. ## Evidence From the Decoder interview with Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider on growing the platform and the protocol. ## Links - [[Verify Who Owns the Infrastructure Before Believing an Independence Claim]] — the check this claim implies, run against the current state rather than the promise - [[Neutral Governance Converts Rivalry Into Shared Infrastructure]] — what a completed divestment buys, and why it is worth the wait - [[A Cited Governance Precedent Needs the Dispute Checked]] — the same interview's caution about reusing a past success as evidence - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Open Source Governance MOC]] — the governance thread this pattern belongs to.