Open Web Foundation: David Recordon at OSCON
Date : 2008 07 24 Category : Tech & Development
Ajaxian
David Recordon has just started his OSCON talk, embedded above, on supporting the Open Web.
He is announcing the Open Web Foundation, a new attempt to have a place for us to incubate, license, and build community around specifications, protocols, and more.
I posted about this on my blog as I am an initial member:
I am excited to see the recent talk of Open Web Foundation is now out there. I think that it is poised to become a great new corner of the Web giving us a place for the other stuff.
Let’s take an example. Imagine that you came up with a great idea, something like OAuth. That great idea gains some traction and more people want to get involved. What do you do? People ask about IP policy, and governance, and suddenly you see yourself on the path of creating a new MyApiFoundation.
Wait a minute! There are plenty of standards groups and other organizations out there, surely you don’t have to create MyApiFoundation?
Well, there is the W3C and OASIS, which are pay to play orgs. They have their place, but MyApi may not fit in there. The WHATWG has come up with fantastic work, but the punting on IP was an issue too (solved by working with the W3C).
MyApi has some code in there, so how about putting this in Apache? Apache is great for code, but it doesn’t deal with the other stuff, which is fine. That isn’t its mandate. Apache does things very well though, especially when it comes to governance and the incubator process. What if we had a foundation that had some of the same values around people participating (so anyone can, versus companies) and a varied community (not just a few blokes from the same company).
This is why I am hopeful for the Open Web Foundation. It is a new place to look at if you come up with something helpful for the Open Web, a place that may match your values.
But wait a minute, what about this “Open Web” thing again. As I just said on a post about defining the term, people can’t agree on what the darn thing is! There is a lot of gut feel “Flash and Silverlight are not the Open Web, but GWT is!”
I believe that the Open Web Foundation needs to be a leader in working this out. With metrics in place, the foundation can bless projects that meet the requirements. When a project starts it may not be Open Web yet (e.g. multiple browser implementations). We need a place to move forward and push the Web. Can’t wait to see what happens there.
Announcing a new foundation isn’t what matters. What really matters is what comes of it. I am excited to see how this all evolves.
In somewhat related news, Google Code now supports content licensing to go along with your open source project.