The ground rules as recorded on 3 March 2008 at the Capetown Meeting of the Open TCI Initiative are:
- Anyone can contribute data.
- Anyone can download all data and analyses.
- If there are publications that come from the Open TCI initiative, those who have contributed to the effort will share authorship of the publications.
- All conclusions will be based on data.
- Any disagreements will be settled by data.
- Arguments from first principles will not be accepted unless there are no data on which to base conclusions.
- There will be 100% consensus among the participants supporting the final recommendations of the Open TCI Initiative.
- The results will be freely available to all companies interested in developing TCI, as well as all regulatory agencies looking to understand the basis of the recommendations from the Open TCI Initiative.
- All participants must agree to full disclosure of: consulting relationships, confidentiality agreements, honoraria, institutional support, royalties, stock, other relationships. While financial details can be confidential, the nature of agreements (e.g., whether they are sources of revenue) should be disclosed.