building social web standards

David Recordon
davidrecordon@facebook.com
2009 W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meeting
My background
“Open data is increasingly
important as services move
online.”
-Tim O’Reilly (OSCON 2007)
Common characteristics

Community Free Open Source Adoption

opensource
TM

initiative

From individuals To participate and Implementations Rapid at an

to corporations implement in many languages increasing pace
 Community participation
there are hundreds of members per mailing list

1,500

1,350
1,200
1,200
1,100
900

600

450
300
280

0
Activity Streams microformats OAuth OpenID PubSubHubbub
What do they need to be successful?

Community need

Mentors and best practices

Free to participate

Infrastructure and tools

“Clean” and simple IPR policy

Governance and scope

Adoption
What do they need to be successful?

Community need adhoc IETF OASIS W3C

Mentors and best practices Maybe Maybe Yes Yes

Free to participate Yes Yes $1,100+ $7,900+ * 3

Infrastructure and tools Maybe Some Yes Yes

“Clean” and simple IPR policy No No Depends Yes

Governance and scope Meritocracy Meritocracy Heavy Heavy

Adoption Maybe Maybe Maybe Maybe

The Open Web Foundation
we’re here to help
 The Open Web Foundation is an independent non-profit
dedicated to the development and protection of open, non-
proprietary specifications for web technologies.

Open Web Foundation The Organization Q&A Search

Open Web Foundation RECENT ENTRIES

The Open Web Foundation is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. The Open Web Foundation is
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
Growing Our Ranks
necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification. The Open Web Foundation was conceived last
year to create a framework which helps
The foundation is trying to break the trend of creating separate foundations for each specification, communities behind open web specifications
coming out of the realization that we could come together and generalize our efforts. The details navigate…
regarding membership, governance, sponsorship, and intellectual property rights will be posted By David Recordon | Comments (0)
for public review and feedback in the following weeks.
Announcing the Open Web
As we work out the fine details of the foundation, we invite and encourage individuals to come and
join the discussion. To ask questions please visit our Q&A page. You are also invited to join the Foundation
community and discuss ideas and specifications you would like to see developed within the This morning at OSCON, David Recordon
foundation. announced the creation of the Open Web
Foundation. The Open Web Foundation is an…
By Eran | Comments (0)
Open Web Foundation Agreement
▪ Is understandable by non-lawyers
▪ Written to be simple as possible
▪ Allows derivative works (to support “version 2.0”)
▪ Creates freely implementable specifications
Open Web Foundation Agreement
Copyright

1. Copyright Grant. I grant to you a perpetual (for the duration of the

applicable copyright), worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-
free, copyright license, without any obligation for accounting to me,
to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly
perform, sublicense, distribute, and implement the Specification to
the full extent of my copyright interest in the Specification.

2. Attribution. As a condition of the copyright grant, you must include an

attribution to the Specification in any derivative work you make
based on the Specification. That attribution must include, at
minimum, the Specification name and version number.
Open Web Foundation Agreement
Patent Non-Assert

1. The Promise. I, on behalf of myself and my successors in interest and

assigns, irrevocably promise not to assert my Necessary Claims
against you for your Implementation, subject to the following. This is
a personal promise directly from me to you, and you acknowledge as a
condition of benefiting from it that no rights from me are received
from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this
promise. This promise also applies to your making, using, selling,
offering for sale, importing or distributing an implementation of any
subsequent derivative works incorporating the Specification 1) only
to the extent that it implements the Specification, and 2) so long as all
required portions of the Specification are implemented. This promise
does not extend to any portion of the derivative work that was not
included in the Specification.
Open Web Foundation Agreement
Patent Non-Assert Termination

1. As a Result of Claims by You. All rights, grants, and promises made by

me to you under this Agreement are terminated if you file, maintain,
or voluntarily participate in a lawsuit against me or any person or
entity asserting that its Implementation infringes your Necessary
Claims, unless that suit was in response to a corresponding suit first
brought against you.

2. As Result of Claims by a Related Entity. If a Related Entity of mine files,

maintains, or voluntarily participates in a lawsuit asserting that an
Implementation infringes its Necessary Claims, then I relinquish any
rights, grants, and promises I have received for the Specification from
other signatories of this Agreement, unless a) my promise to you was
terminated pursuant to section 3.1.2.1, or b) that suit was in response
to a corresponding suit first brought by you against the Related
Entity.
Open Web Foundation Agreement
A fallback RAND-z patent license

1. Patent License Commitment. In addition to rights granted in 3.1, on

behalf of me and my successors in interest and assigns, I agree to
grant to you a no charge, royalty free license to my Necessary Claims
on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms solely for your
Implementation.
Social web standards
Web standards
that I’m paying attention to
▪ Activity Streams
▪ HTML 5
▪ OpenID
▪ OAuth
▪ OpenSocial
▪ Portable Contacts API
▪ PubSubHubbub
▪ Salmon
▪ WebFinger
▪ XMPP
They’re getting major adoption
Looking at Facebook today
Facebook the data is interconnected
Bob Beth Erin

Servers