The document discusses building open specifications for the social web. It notes that open data and services are increasingly important as more things move online. It outlines several existing open specifications for identity, discovery, authorization, relationships, and activities. These specifications were developed similarly to open source software, with communities creating freely implementable standards. However, open specifications still face challenges around licensing, copyright, communities, and incubation of new specifications. The document proposes the Open Web Foundation to address these challenges by licensing specifications freely, using Creative Commons for copyright, supporting communities, and incubating new open web specifications.

1. Building Open Specs
(for the web)
David Recordon November 5, 2008
ApacheCon US New Orleans

2. Open Source
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jagelado/16631508/

3. http://www.illustratorworld.com/artwork/2238/

4. “Open Data is increasingly
important as services
move online.”
—Tim O'Reilly (OSCON '07)

5. realtime data inside!
quot;It's like flying on an iPhone!quot;
http://flickr.com/photos/sathishcj/1868113345/

6. http://flickr.com/photos/
mag3737/1914076277/

7. Social Application
• Each with a few great features
(UNIX philosophy)
• Creating combined value
• Building blocks for new value
http://www.slideshare.net/stoweboyd/building-social-applications

9. http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/2545757754/

10. http://adactio.com/journal/1357

12. My 20+ Social Networks

18. Interoperable Platforms

24. Joseph Smarr (Plaxo)

25. The “Open Stack” (for the social web)
Identity & Profile ! OpenID + hcard
Discovery ! XRDS-Simple
Authorization ! OAuth
Relationships & Contacts ! PoCo + XFN
Activities ! ATOM + ??
Gadgets ! OpenSocial

28. They Are Quite Similar...
• Communities ranging from individuals to companies
• Occurring outside of formal standards bodies
• Open Source implementations in many languages
• Major adoption at an increasing pace
• Open specifications designed to be freely implementable

29. Standards Bodies

30. And share problems...

31. Licensing (IPR)

32. Foundations

33. “Best Practices”

34. Community

35. ...but Open Source solved this

36. opensource
TM
initiative

37. The Open Web
Foundation

38. Licensing (freely implementable by anyone)
Copyright (ideally Creative Commons for each spec)
Community (to support the Open Web)
Incubation (creating new open specifications for the web)

39. Licensing (freely implementable by anyone)
Copyright (ideally Creative Commons for each spec)
Community (to support the Open Web)
Incubation (creating new open specifications for the web)

40. Licensing (freely implementable by anyone)
Copyright (ideally Creative Commons for each spec)
Community (to support the Open Web)
Incubation (creating new open specifications for the web)

41. Licensing (freely implementable by anyone)
Copyright (ideally Creative Commons for each spec)
Community (to support the Open Web)
Incubation (creating new open specifications for the web)

42. Licensing (freely implementable by anyone)
Copyright (ideally Creative Commons for each spec)
Community (to support the Open Web)
Incubation (creating new open specifications for the web)

43. Two Stages

44. 1) License

45. 2) Incubator

46. http://OpenWebFoundation.org/

47. http://groups.google.com/group/open-web-discuss

49. Questions?
david@sixapart.com