Fw: OpenSocial Foundation Moving Standards Work to W3C Social Web Activity (Press Release)

FYI.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Open Web Standards - IBM 
Software Group

----- Forwarded by Arnaud Le Hors/Cupertino/IBM on 12/16/2014 01:06 PM 
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From:   Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
To:     "w3c-ac-forum@w3.org" <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>
Date:   12/16/2014 01:00 PM
Subject:        OpenSocial Foundation Moving Standards Work to W3C Social 
Web Activity (Press Release)



Dear Advisory Committee Representative,

W3C issued a press release a moment ago:
 
   OpenSocial Foundation Moving Standards Work to W3C Social Web Activity
   http://www.w3.org/2014/12/opensocial.html.en

 
There are links in the online version, and the text is below.

For any translations of the press release, see:
 http://www.w3.org/Press/Releases-2014#opensocial


Media contact:
 Ian Jacobs, <w3t-pr@w3.org>, +1.718 260 9447

Ian Jacobs, Head of W3C Communications

=====================

16 December 2014 — Building on the 31 July 2014 announcement of
the W3C Social Web Working Group, the OpenSocial Foundation and
W3C today announce the transfer of OpenSocial specifications and
assets to the W3C. As of 1 January 2015, OpenSocial Foundation
will close and future work will take place within the W3C Social
Web Activity, chartered to make it easier to build and integrate
social applications into the Open Web Platform.

Said OpenSocial Foundation President John Mertic, “The consensus
of the OpenSocial Board is that the next phase of Social Web
Standards, built in large part on the success of OpenSocial
standards and projects like Apache Shindig and Rave, should occur
under the auspices of the W3C Social Web Working Group, of which
OpenSocial is a founding member.” Mertic continued, “The
OpenSocial community has taken the idea of industry standards to
govern the Social Web from dream to reality. By shifting our work
now to the W3C Social Web Working Group, we will make the Open
Social Web inevitable and ubiquitous.”

OpenSocial brought a number of specifications to the W3C Social
Web Working Group that launched in July 2014, including Activity
Streams 2.0 and OpenSocial 2.5.1 Activity Streams and Embedded
Experiences APIs. Those specifications are mature and widely
deployed across the industry.

"With the social business marketplace evolving, we are looking to
build on the success of OpenSocial Foundation initiatives to
offer deeper integration of social business in the full Open Web
Platform," said Jason Roy Gary, Distinguished Engineer, CTO IBM
Enterprise Social Solutions & Senior OpenSocial Foundation Board
Member. "W3C's technology agenda, global community, and patent
policy make it the right venue for developing the next generation
of social business standards. As they become platform
foundations, these standards will fuel a wide variety of future
social applications."

“Social standards are part of the application foundations for the
Open Web Platform,” said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO, “meaning they will
be used everywhere, in diverse applications that run on phones,
cars, televisions, and ereaders. We are thrilled to be working
with our OpenSocial Foundation colleagues on the next generation
of social standards, and to further leverage the benefits of
HTML5 and other Open Web Platform technologies.”

The OpenSocial Foundation and W3C invite people to participate in these 
groups:

  * The Social Web Working Group, which is defining technical
  standards and APIs to facilitate access to social
  functionality. These include a common JSON-based syntax for
  social data, a client-side API, and a Web protocol for
  federating social information such as status updates.
 
  * The Social Interest Group, which is coordinating development of
  social use cases, and formulating a broad strategy to enable
  social business and federation.

A FAQ answers some common questions about this transition. 

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international
consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the
public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily
pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and
guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. The
Open Web Platform is a current major focus. Over 400
organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run
by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research
Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered
in France, Keio University in Japan, and Beihang University in
China, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information
see http://www.w3.org/

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447