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The COSM Project

In 2017, contributors to the Open Document Format (ODF) specification at OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) noted that while the Technical Committee continues to generate changes, the integration of these changes – a substantial task, which is key for the future of the ODF standard – is only being conducted on a volunteer basis.

To support current adoptions of the ODF standard format by governments and enterprises and potential adoptions in the future, it would have been important to release the new ODF 1.3 version in a timely manner, to avoid that delays could affect the position of ODF in the marketplace.

Open Document Format 1.0 was published as an ISO/IEC international standard ISO/IEC 26300 – Open Document Format for Office Applications in 2006. Open Document Format 1.2 was published as ISO/IEC standard in 2015.

In early 2018, the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation addressed the need of evolving the standard by establishing the independent COSM – Community of ODF Specification Maintainers – project at Public Software CIC (a UK Community Interest Company) to hold funds and to retain editors to work at the Technical Committee.

The COSM project co-ordinates with the OASIS TC, solicits and secures funds from ODF stakeholders, solicits experienced editors and arranges for one or more to work at the direction of the TC to edit the specification.

As a major ODF stakeholder, TDF donated a seed of Euro 10,000 to get the COSM project started, plus up to Euro 20,000 to match each euro donated by other stakeholders. So far, the COSM project has been backed by Microsoft, Collabora, CIB and the UK Government.

Editors have been working on the ODF 1.3 specifications, which have been regularly reviewed during the weekly meetings of the Technical Committee, and are expected in the third quarter of 2019. A number of features have been also been assigned to ODF 1.4. The COSM Project is now soliciting funds for future work.

Significant contributions to the specifications have been made by Regina Henschel (volunteer from The Document Foundation) and Michael Stahl from CIB.

ODF Advocacy at OASIS

Following the initiation of the COSM project, team members of The Document Foundation and CIB have got in touch with OASIS management to re-launch the defunct ODF Adoption TC as ODF Advocacy. The project has been accepted and has been launched as OASIS Open Project in May 2019, with the objective of increasing the awareness of ODF and fostering adoption by governments.

OASIS announces the ODF Advocacy Open Project

The ODF Advocacy Open Project we have pre-announced at FOSDEM is now a reality. Yesterday, OASIS has released the following press release, which is just the first step of a new sustained activity focused on supporting the adoption of ODF – the only true standard document format available on the market – by governments, public administrations and enterprises worldwide, to increase interoperability (and thus knowledge sharing), reduce hidden costs associated to document management, and get rid of vendor lock-in.

OASIS Introduces Open Projects Program to Bridge Open Source and Standards Development

AirBus, CIB, Fujitsu, IBM, Red Hat, Siemens, Software AG, The Document Foundation, and others sponsor Open Projects

Boston, May 8, 2019 – OASIS, a global nonprofit consortium, today announced the launch of Open Projects, the first-of-its-kind program that creates a more transparent and collaborative future for open source and standards development. Open Projects gives communities the power to develop what they choose–APIs, code, specifications, reference implementations, guidelines– in one place, under open source licenses, with a path to recognition in global policy and procurement.

The lines between open source and open standards have been blurring for some time, and communities in both arenas have been calling for more flexibility and options for collaboration. Open Projects is a new approach that addresses the need for change in everything from handling IP to governance and decision-making, from funding to establishing trust and assuring quality.

“With Open Projects, we’re building a movement to transform the open source and standards world,” said Gershon Janssen, Chairman, OASIS Board of Directors. “We want to dissolve the barriers that separate communities. We want to empower groups with more control and streamlined governance. We want to support projects by giving them all the process they need–and not a bit more–so they can accomplish great things fast.”

Open Projects builds on the OASIS experience and reputation for producing quality work that’s been trusted and supported by governments and industries worldwide for more than 25 years.

“For many, open source has become a means of establishing de facto software standards. However, de facto standards are not recognized by many governments and institutions,” said Chris Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO Open Tech for IBM. “OASIS Open Projects provides an important new opportunity to leverage the rapid innovation of open source in the process of developing open standards. The potential to achieve ISO, IEC, or ITU standards approval is a huge value for many important open source initiatives.” Ferris, who also holds a leadership position on the Hyperledger Fabric project, played an instrumental role in defining the OASIS Open Projects program and now serves on its Advisory Council.

The Open Projects program is being advanced by some of the most accomplished, regarded minds in open source today.

As part of the program announcement, OASIS is launching the first two Open Projects – Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) and OpenDocument Format (ODF) Advocacy.

The OSLC Open Project advances a suite of standard REST APIs to connect data and achieve the digital thread across domains, applications, and organizations. It is sponsored by AirBus, Austrian Institute of Technology, Bank of America, Boeing, Dassault, Fujitsu, IBM, Koneksys, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Red Hat, Siemens, Software AG, and Tasktop.

“OSLC helps create standard REST APIs that solve industry integration challenges,” said Andrew Berezovskyi of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “Open Projects enables the OSLC community to produce deliverables that meet requirements from various stakeholders without being hindered by the weight of foundation bureaucracy or the baggage that comes with financial, legal, technical, and marketing administration.”

The ODF Advocacy Open Project promotes the world’s leading document standard. After being approved as an OASIS Standard, ODF was recognized by ISO/IEC and endorsed by governments around the world as a way to ensure permanent access to data and eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in. The ODF Advocacy Open Project is sponsored by CIB and The Document Foundation.

“ODF guarantees perennial access to data that can be transferred in a transparent way between different apps, computers and operating systems, getting rid of hidden interoperability costs, vendor lock-in issues and license fees,” said Italo Vignoli, Co-Founder, The Document Foundation.

Additional Open Projects for blockchain and other areas will be announced in the coming months. Further details about OASIS Open Projects are available here or email info@oasis-open-projects.org.

Open Document Editors DevRoom at FOSDEM 2019: Call for Papers

FOSDEM LogoFOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and takes place each year in Brussels (Belgium) at the ULB Campus Solbosch. In 2019, it will be held on Saturday February 2, and Sunday February 3.

The Open Document Editors DevRoom is scheduled for Saturday, February 2 (from 10:30AM to 7:00PM, room UB2.147).

We are inviting proposals for talks about Open Document Editors or the ODF standard document format, on topics such as code, localization, QA, UX, tools, extensions and adoption-related cases. Please keep in mind that product pitches are not allowed at FOSDEM.

The length of talks should be limited to a maximum of 25 minutes, as we would like to have questions after each presentation, and to fit as many presenters as possible in the schedule. Exceptions must be explicitly requested and justified. You may be assigned LESS time than you request.

All submissions have to be made in the Pentabarf event planning tool: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM19.

While filing your proposal, please provide the title of your talk, a short abstract (one or two paragraphs), some information about yourself (name, bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be already stored in Pentabarf).

To submit your talk, click on “Create Event”, then make sure to select the “Open Document Editors” devroom as the “Track”. Otherwise, your talk will not be even considered for any devroom at all.

If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, even if your talk was not accepted, please reuse it. Create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. If you have any issues with Pentabarf, please contact ode-devroom-manager@fosdem.org.

The deadline is Monday, December 24, 2018. Accepted speakers will be notified by Thursday, December 27, 2018. The schedule will be published on Monday, December 31, 2018.

Recording Permission

We will record and stream all main tracks, devrooms and lightning talks live. The recordings will be published under the same licence as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). If, exceptionally, you believe there is a legitimate reason why your presentation should not be streamed or recorded, you must seek our agreement before submitting it.

In the “Submission notes” field, please indicate that you agree to have your presentation recorded and published under the same license as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). For example: “If my speech is accepted for FOSDEM, I hereby agree to be recorded and to have recordings – including slides and other presentation related documents – published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International License. Sincerely, Name”.

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