Open Web Foundation
Eran Hammer-Lahav: This morning at OSCON, David Recordon announced the creation of the Open Web Foundation. The Open Web Foundation is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification.
Having been involved with the ASF for some time, I’m concerned that a number of “reflexes” are initially out of alignment with this group.
Examples: Joining this group requires approval. and We shouldn’t start with an open specification for a DSL modem authentication protocol as I doubt we have the domain expertise to do a good job.
Key question: who is “we"? Oversimplifying what the Apache Incubator does, it makes sure that a "podling” has a diverse and sustainable set of contributors, who are committed to do their development openly and collaboratively, and have the rights and desire to license all the necessary IPR under the terms specified by the Apache Software Foundation.
Verifying that such a group exists and meets these criteria does not generally require domain expertise.
If this group evolves to the point where it finds the right balance of enabling and getting out of the way, this foundation could be a very handy thing to have around.