Stewarded by a designer, not a vendor.
ULC is stewarded by Foad Shafighi, a practicing lighting designer, not a software company and not a trade body. The schema reflects what specifiers need because the steward specifies: the taxonomy uses the categories designers use, and the provenance fields answer the questions a spec audit asks.
Foad Shafighi
MIESIALDCLD
Working across the United States and the European specification community.
Not a software vendor. Not a trade body.
Open by license, open to change.
ULC is MIT-licensed: anyone can use it, fork it, or build commercial products on it, with no royalty and no committee. Schema changes go through an open Schema Change Proposal process: anyone can file one, review happens in public, and the four canonical reference records are the fixtures every change must still satisfy.
Because the license is permissive and the governance is public, the standard does not depend on one person. If the steward ever steps away, anyone can fork and continue.
In dialogue with the industry.
ULC is in active dialogue with DIAL (which governs DIALux and GLDF), the IES, and the LIA. That is dialogue, not endorsement; formal endorsement is a longer process ULC has not pursued at this stage. Formal-standards bodies like IEEE, ISO, and CEN move on multi-year cycles, so ULC ships the working spec now and stays structured to align with a formal process later. Crosswalks to GLDF, ETIM, IES LM-63, and EULUMDAT are planned, each one requiring coordination with its governing body.
ULC was introduced at IALD Enlighten Europe 2025 in Valencia and developed through dialogue following the National Lighting Bureau AI Think Tank in New York, in 2026.
Evaluating a pilot, or want to get involved? Write to the steward at [email protected], or open an issue on GitHub .
Common questions.
How does ULC relate to GLDF?
They solve different problems at different layers, and a manufacturer can publish both. GLDF (Global Lighting Data Format) is the rich XML container the DIALux and RELUX planning ecosystems read for photometric planning; ULC is a lightweight JSON record optimized for datasheet data and direct consumption by AI and design tools. ULC does not replace GLDF and is not a competitor to it. A field-level crosswalk between the two is planned, so a value expressed in one can map to the other. GLDF is governed by DIAL, with whom ULC is in active dialogue.
Why isn't this an IEEE, ISO, or CEN standard?
Formal standards bodies (IEEE, ISO, CEN) operate on 5 to 10 year cycles. The AI-mediated specifier-discovery shift is happening now; the data layer needs to exist now for the discovery loop to work. ULC ships the technical artifact today, on the open-standard trajectory and structured to slot into a formal process later if the bodies that govern adjacent layers move toward it.
The MIT license and the open Schema Change Proposal process mean ULC is structurally compatible with a future formal-standards adoption. The repository, the GOVERNANCE.md, and the SCP history would all carry forward. The current posture is "ship the working spec; let formal-standards alignment be a downstream conversation," not "wait for a body to authorize before publishing."
Is this just LightingAgent's data layer with the serial numbers filed off?
Three structural answers. One, the repository is at github.com/ulcspec/ULC, not under any LightingAgent organization. Two, MIT license and open governance: anyone can fork, anyone can submit Schema Change Proposals, anyone can implement a competing consumer. Three, LightingAgent.AI is the first consumer because the same founder built both, and the founder is upfront about that.
The structural choice was to ship the standard in a neutrally stewarded repo with open governance, not as a LightingAgent-owned format. That choice is permanent at the license layer.
How do schema changes happen?
Schema changes happen through the Schema Change Proposal process. Anyone can file. The flow: file an SCP in the spec repository with the proposed change and rationale; the SCP is reviewed publicly; the maintainer responds with merge, request-for-revision, or rejection with rationale.
The four canonical reference records in examples/ are the structural test fixtures every SCP must continue to validate against. Schema versioning is semver-style; pre-1.0 changes are additive per the ROADMAP.
How is this funded?
ULC is not a business. No company owns it, there is no subscription, and nothing is paywalled. The steward maintains it as part of the same practice that informs the schema.
Because it is MIT-licensed and openly governed, the standard survives regardless of any one person or funding source: if the steward ever stops maintaining it, anyone can fork and continue.