What democratic principles are embodied in the rules?

The openEHR Foundation does its work using an open engineering  approach, i.e. requirements gathering, design, implementation and testing. This is true for both for technical modelling activities and for clinically led activities like archetype development. Each project decides the details of its development and change process. Deliverables for a project are created by the activities of the project group, and changes are made according to a Change Management Plan. The change process for some projects, including the specifications project, requires that all Change Requests (CRs) are processed by the Architectural Review Board, which operates according to its own Terms of Reference. Community involvement is sought on many changes to the specifications. For implementation projects, it is up to the group to decide how to make changes - it is usually decided on the relevant project mailing list . Thus openEHR is open without trying to be democratic in the literal sense of the word - on the basis that engineering work is not by nature democratic, it is a guided process in which argumentation and review among experts has its place.