The conformance mark
One standard, kept whole.
A mark you can trust because it can be checked.
The conformance mark certifies that a tool or dataset implements NADA correctly — fully reversible, canonical English on disk, and a faithful rendering of the code as it actually runs. It is how the standard stays one standard: free for everyone to build on, and impossible to quietly fork or strip-mine.
What it certifies
Three guarantees, and nothing less.
A conforming implementation is not judged on its features or its interface. It is judged on three properties that must all hold at once. They are deliberately narrow, so that “conformant” means exactly one thing wherever you see the mark.
The transformation is lossless in both directions. Code rendered into a human language and saved back to disk is byte-for-byte identical to where it started — no meaning, formatting, or comment is dropped along the way.
Without it — A round-trip that quietly changed the program would split the ecosystem into files that no longer agree with each other.
The file that is committed, shared, and run is always the canonical English source. The reader’s language is a faithful view over that one source, never a second copy that can drift away from it.
Without it — If each language wrote its own on-disk form, the same program would fork into dozens of incompatible files. One source on disk keeps the world reading the same code.
Every keyword, identifier, and term shown to the reader maps to the canonical source through the published NADA language data — nothing is invented, mistranslated, or silently approximated. What you read is what runs.
Without it — A rendering that bends the meaning would make the displayed language untrustworthy, which is the one thing the standard exists to prevent.
What you read is what runs. The mark is a promise that the two never come apart.
Why it exists
The defence against fragmentation and strip-mining.
A standard that anyone can extend is a standard anyone can break. Two failures would end NADA’s usefulness, and the mark is the structural answer to both.
If incompatible implementations all called themselves NADA, the same code would read differently — or stop running — depending on whose tool opened it. The promise that a file means the same thing everywhere would quietly disappear.
The language data is free and open on purpose. The risk is that a company takes the data, ships a closed product on top of it, captures the audience, and lets the open commons wither. The mark does not restrict the data — it protects the name, so the open project always remains the authoritative one.
This is the anti-enclosure defence described in how NADA stays open: free data under CC-BY, open tooling under AGPL, and a name that only certified work may carry. Anyone may build their own version — but only conformant work may call itself NADA.
The same model that keeps Unicode, the W3C, and the IETF one standard, applied here.
How to get certified
A test, not a negotiation.
Certification checks an implementation against the published standard. It is meant to be mechanical and reproducible: the same release, run against the same checks, always reaches the same result.
- 01
Build to the standard
Implement against the published NADA specification and the open language data. The pipeline that builds and checks the data is AGPL, so you can confirm the same work the foundation does. [TO CONFIRM: canonical URL of the published specification + conformance test suite]
- 02
Run the conformance suite
Run your release against the conformance test suite, which exercises reversibility, on-disk canonicalisation, and rendering fidelity across the supported languages and programming languages. Every case must pass. [TO CONFIRM: pass threshold — the standard requires all cases to pass; confirm any language-coverage minimum]
- 03
Submit for review
Send the foundation your results and a reference to the exact release under review. The foundation reproduces the run and confirms the implementation meets all three guarantees. [TO CONFIRM: submission channel — application form vs. email to hello@nadalang.org — and review turnaround]
- 04
Receive the mark, for that release
On a pass, the foundation grants the right to display the conformance mark and call the release NADA-conformant. The grant is tied to the certified version. [TO CONFIRM: certificate validity period, re-certification cadence, fees if any, and a public register of certified implementations]
The mark itself — its artwork, the exact wording it permits, and the file you display — is issued on certification. [TO CONFIRM: mark artwork, attribution wording, and minimum-size / clear-space usage specifics]
Trademark & mark usage
Free to build on. The name is the line.
The data and tools impose almost no conditions. The trademark is where the standard draws its one firm line — because the name is what carries the guarantee.
The language data is CC-BY and the pipeline is AGPL. Anyone may build their own implementation, ship it, and charge for it. The mark restricts none of that — it only governs the use of the name.
NADA™ and the conformance mark are trademarks of the foundation. Only an implementation that has been certified against the standard may describe itself as NADA-conformant or display the mark.
An implementation either holds all three guarantees or it does not. There is no “mostly conformant.” A tool that meets some of the standard may say what it does plainly, but may not borrow the mark’s assurance.
Certification is tied to a version and is reviewed. If a release stops meeting the standard, the foundation may withdraw the right to use the mark for that release.
NADA™ and the conformance mark are trademarks of the foundation. Language data CC-BY · pipeline AGPL. Trademark guidelines and the formal mark-usage policy are published separately. [TO CONFIRM: link to the trademark policy + governing jurisdiction]
Apply
Building on NADA? Get certified.
If your tool or dataset implements the standard, certification lets your users trust that what they read is what runs — and lets you carry the mark that says so.
hello@nadalang.org · specification and test suite on request.