This morning at that OSCON conference David Recordon of Six Apart will announce on stage the formation of the Open Web Foundation. The new foundation is about providing a home for the development and ratification of web-related standards efforts. The foundation will be focused on developing the technical specifications of protocols used for communication and inter-operability between applications on the web. The foundation will also set out the legal terms and best practices for the use and transport of both private and public data, and the usage of web services.
We first reported on the announcement on Tuesday of this week after Chris Saad, the co-founder of the Data Portability project wrote a post about the announcement. The Data Portability project is focused on the evangelism of data openness and transparency, while the new Open Web Foundation will be focused on implementation issues.
Yesterday at the F8 conference Facebook announced their support for the new foundation, and we have learnt that Google, MySpace, Six Apart, Plaxo and many others will also be supporting the new initiative. Google and Facebook now have an appropriate venue where they can resolve their differences and work on a standard way to have their users interact with each other between the Facebook Connect and OpenSocial platforms. The web foundation also provides the technical details, as well as policy details, on how such a relationship between companies and products could work.
Currently there is not much more at the Open Web Foundation outside of a lot of strong backing, a lot of strongly willed organizers and a lot of initiative. The foundation hopes that within the next few months after the announcement today they will be able to release their first set of work on data standards and formats.
Sorry, don’t we already have the w3c.org?
Great Now I have two choices, I am in the market for getting a technology called OpenQL Open Quick Language standardized, are there any European Standard Bodies?
Looks like you have a typo in the web address in the box above.
The Open Web Foundation is not a standards body. The W3C, OASIS and others do that fantastically today. This is about helping speed the development and proliferation of open specifications so we can figure out if they make sense or not. The website will be updated in the coming days but we’re not trying to create a new standards organization; just solve some pain points we’ve been feeling. You can read more here:
http://kveton.com/blog/2008/07.....oundation/
Hooray for openess and data transparency. If you are thinking about seriously starting an internet or development business check it…
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
As Scott said, we’re not trying to create a new standards body; the IETF, OASIS, W3C, and others already do a great job!
We’re also not going to be setting “the legal terms and best practices for the use and transport of both private and public data”. Rather focusing on the underlying technologies.
I like McCain,I think he will be our president.It’s said that his daughter placed a profile on a famous dating site,”"” Tallchat.c om “”",seeking boyfriends.But I think she just need their tickets!!!!
The software industry have been trying for decades to agree on standards. Everybody understands why they are so important, and yet very few standards are really standard.
I hope this initiative will make its way into open source business software as well. There have been so many attempts at describing the different business objects under a common standard, I hope David and his team will help make it happen for business software too.
The logo kind of reminds me of my logo design submitted to the Data Portability group. I’m choosing to believe I inspired it.
/me still wishes I didn’t need Javascript on to leave comments on TC
What a great week for opening up the Social Web!
In the home page source code, i found this:
<!– –>
what that should say is:
<!–<div id=”homepage-image” title=”Don’t be a cock. Support the Open Web.”> </div>–>
Congratulations, all! It’s an exciting time to be working on these technologies, and I wish you the best of luck.
More open data can only be a good thing! Great news!
@mp That’s because this was previously the homepage image:
http://openwebfoundation.org/m.....-image.jpg
Anyway, I’ve removed the snarky comment, since it’s not really as funny without the picture of the rooster.
Vaporware — is to — software
as
YetAnotherFoundationToSolveImaginaryProblems
EnvisionedBySelfProclaimedVisionaries — is to — __fill__in__the__blanks
This is to help accelerate the development and proliferation of open specifications so that we can solve if they make sense or not.
Well, I hear people talk of the dying IFRAME - and Microsoft and others rely on it - I Hear about the joy of AJAX and watch how complex things get - I just wonder when people will realize that we have plenty of technology and if you want to make this better - just write better software/web pages/scripts etc. We have the tools… plenty of them… they all are pretty good - its what and how you use them that matters.
I made the fastest web server I’ve seen yet - No SSL (haven’t bothered yet) , but faster than lihttp, apache, and oviously IIS… How? Sticking to the basics! I’ve also made some pretty fast web template systems - whose simplicity is what makes them so light weight.
Having yet another standards “Listen to us” group - just means more complexity - just watch.