The OSR Plan:

>From a previous mail, RMS's comments:
> As things now stand, the GNU GPL has no official status.  Perhaps
> someday, if free software is far more accepted than it is now, the GPL
> or something like it will become an official standard.  But this is an
> awfully big chicken, and I don't want to claim it will hatch out of
> the small eggs we are incubating today.

Wade's response:

It has a VERY VISIBLE status, but not "official".  Why not make it
official, or we can form something like an Open Standards Repository
(OSR?).  We have registered a name and have a server (thanks SEUL):
http://www.openstandards.org (mission statement and info from this
thread to be added this week).

OSR Functions

• The OSR will be a central location for referencing, reviewing, and downloading standards for the Free/Open source community.
• Organizations and individuals may submit standards.
• Submittal would require doc name, synopsis, doc license, author, home page reference, and a few other minor items TBD.
• OSR would assign an OSR doc number (like Internet RFC #).
• OSR would maintain a history of each registered standard.
• OSR would track updates to standards (version control, rollback). (Aaron: I think storing multiple versions, but that it should strive to maintain end products of documents rather than each minor change over time. In the case of standards, people tend IMHO to only care about the end product.) (Wade: Only store the "released" versions. If someone refers to GPL version 1.0 and another refers version 2.0, both should be available. Presentation should be current first with a link to a history and comment page, me thinks.)
• OSR could possibly maintain and track discussions on evolving standards (mail archives, submitted comments, etc.).
• OSR would have a signature or MD5 sum for all docs in the server so they may be validated.
• OSR is designed to be a long-term project and hence might eventually need to be sponsored by multiple organizations.

Overall, OSR may serve as a quasi-official function for open standards (those that are not RFC's, STD's, or standards associated with a vendor or such). Where would you currently go to register the GPL as an Internet standard?

The OSR could additionally index other publicly available documents such as the IETF RFC's to facilitate location of relevant information. (Aaron's suggestion!)

OSR Objectives:

The FIRST objective would be to establish the structure and a simple WWW site (quite short effort). The SECOND objective would be to add published documents that don't have a standard home (unlike the RFC's). The THIRD objective would be to add other content (which has a home, e.g., RFC's, vendor's docs, etc. which would be useful but are not primary to the function of the OSR).

Types of Standards:

• free and open source licenses (GPL, BSD, X, etc.)
• doc standards such as man, info, ODE, linuxdoc
• open protocols that are not published by the IETF RFCs (e.g., streaming MP3)
• file formats that are not published elsewhere
• open source RFCs

The following could be document groups:

• LIC: licenses
• STD: standards
• RFC: RFC's
• ICD: interface control documents (interface standards)

Implementation Steps:

1. take the above and create a proposal for comments
2. create the OSR (invite others to join, setup WWW site, mailing list?)
3. define the required info (name, groups, etc.)
4. define the submittal formats (ODE could help here)
5. collect existing standards (GPL, Linux File layout, etc.)
6. go live with OSR revision 1.0
7. updates, etc.

Some Examples:

DOC Number  Name, Version, Date
----------- -------------------------------------------------------
OSR-LIC-001 GNU GPL License, Version 1.0, date
OSR-LIC-002 GNU GPL License, Version 2.0, date
OSR-LIC-003 GNU LGPL License, Version 1.0, date

OSR-RFC-001 Open Standards Repository Concept, Version 1.0, date
OSR-RFC-002 OSR Submittal Requirements Draft, Version 1.0, date

OSR-STD-001 OSR Submittal Requirements, Version 1.0, date

OSR-ICD-001 Streaming MP3 via ???

Feedback is welcomed!