The Open Web Foundation Agreement (OWFa) for Collaborative Open Cloud Standards
As part of a new initiative at the Open Web Foundation -- a group dedicated to the creation of community-driven specifications & standards. David Rudin along with several other individuals & organizations have crafted a new simple and easy to understand Open Web Foundation agreement (OWFa) targeting collaborative specification development and publishing. You can think of OWFa as similar to the Creative Commons license. But unlike the a CC license the OWFa was developed with the specific needs of spec & standards developers covering aspects such as patents, copyright/trademarks and other issues that most contributors (including open source developers) are concerned about.
More specifically it was created with an open collaboration model in mind where both large companies and individuals can equally collaborate without fear of legal ramifications. Using the OWFa the actual spec development can be done in any forum the participants choose (Unincorporated Google groups / Social Networks, non-profits, startups, Enterprises, etc.)
I'll also be the first to point out that one of the key authors is David Rudin, a Microsoft Standards Attorney. But regardless of Rudin's employer, this is a well thought out document and I for one am very excited by the potential usage of OWFa within a variety of standards processes. I believe that OWFa has the potential to dramatically effect the way we as industry both collaborate and innovate when it comes to the development of common truely open standards, whitepapers and best practices. I encourage anyone who truly believes in the creation of an Open Web to take a look the OWFa.
You can download a copy of the the final draft from here.
More specifically it was created with an open collaboration model in mind where both large companies and individuals can equally collaborate without fear of legal ramifications. Using the OWFa the actual spec development can be done in any forum the participants choose (Unincorporated Google groups / Social Networks, non-profits, startups, Enterprises, etc.)
I'll also be the first to point out that one of the key authors is David Rudin, a Microsoft Standards Attorney. But regardless of Rudin's employer, this is a well thought out document and I for one am very excited by the potential usage of OWFa within a variety of standards processes. I believe that OWFa has the potential to dramatically effect the way we as industry both collaborate and innovate when it comes to the development of common truely open standards, whitepapers and best practices. I encourage anyone who truly believes in the creation of an Open Web to take a look the OWFa.
You can download a copy of the the final draft from here.
Labels: cloud standards, open web foundation, owfa, spec
posted by enomaly
at
3:10 PM
2 Comments :
Huh... Three S stands for Cloud Computing - Scalability, Savings and Sexiness.
Thanks Reuven. While I certainly helped and participated in the OWF effort, the agreement itself is the result of a community effort that has involved a wide variety of individuals from a wide variety of companies and philosophical backgrounds. Despite the fact the OWF membership is based on the individual, I think it’s important to point out that Microsoft and a variety of other employers, including Yahoo, Google, Six Apart, and Facebook, have been very supportive of their employees who are participating in this effort.
- David
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
Links to this post :
Create a Link
<< Home