doc(standard): make categories optional and add other

[bfabio]

The list of categories have always being a problem, stuck between:

• keeping the list short and curated, which excludes legit use cases and annoys authors
• making it huge and comprehensive, which turns it into a mess nobody can navigate
• maintaining it manually, which is slow, political, and opaque
• avoiding local categorizations (probably a good call), but ending up with a list that feels incomplete

Make them optional, so if people feel they fit in their usecase they can opt in, otherwise they can ignore them or user other.

Fix #217.

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Project	Deployment	Preview	Comments	Updated (UTC)
publiccode-yml	Ready	Preview	Comment	Sep 5, 2025 7:36am

[bfabio]

@yaml-9000 minor

[yaml-9000]

Thanks for your contribution 🙏

This is now marked as a minor-change proposal to the standard,
this means that old versions of publiccode.yml will still be valid with this change.

Example of minor changes are additions of new keys or making keys optional.

The Chair will eventually pick up this proposal and start the voting procedure using @yaml-9000 vote-start

cc @publiccodeyml/chair @publiccodeyml/steering-committee

_{📄 Voting procedure | 📄 Working Group Charter | 🤖 bot commands}

[bfabio]

@yaml-9000 vote-start

[yaml-9000]

Voting is now open on this proposal!

If you are a member of the Steering Committee you can now vote!

The polls will stay open for 14 days, until Tue, 14 Oct 2025 07:12:11 GMT.
At the end of that period the Chair (@publiccodeyml/chair) will mark the voting period as over using @yaml-9000 vote-end

Leave a 👍 (thumbs up) on this comment to accept the proposal or a 👎 (thumbs down) to reject it.

cc @publiccodeyml/steering-committee

_{📄 Voting procedure | 📄 Working Group Charter | 🤖 bot commands}

[bfabio]

@yaml-9000 vote-end

[yaml-9000]

Vote results

The results of the vote are:

Vote	Members	Votes count	Percentage
👍 Approve	@bzg @dptdgi	2	100.0%
👎 Reject		0	-

Proposal approved 👍

This proposal is now ready to be merged and get released with a new version of the standard.

cc @publiccodeyml/chair @publiccodeyml/maintainers

_Details

First round: unanimity required

The following users voted (includes non-members of the steering committee):

• bzg voted 👍

• dptdgi voted 👍

_{📄 Voting procedure | 📄 Working Group Charter | 🤖 bot commands}