An OpenSocial Foundation

MAR 25, 2008
By DeWitt Clinton, Google Developer Programs

Today we are pleased to announce that Google is joining together with Yahoo! and MySpace in the creation of a non-profit foundation for the open and transparent governance of the OpenSocial specifications and intellectual property. This foundation, modeled after the community-led and industry-supported OpenID Foundation, will seek to ensure that the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely and without restriction, in perpetuity. The establishment of the foundation is a necessary and exciting next step toward an open model for application syndication via an increasingly socially-enabled Internet, and we invite and encourage your involvement as we complete this process over the next several months.

Additionally we are pleased to be a part of the launch of opensocial.org, the new official home for the OpenSocial specifications and developer community. While we are still in the early stages of putting the new site together, we wanted to open the site and the process immediately for community feedback and review.

So please join us, Yahoo!, MySpace, and all of the other OpenSocial containers and application providers, in extending a warm welcome to the community in a spirit of collaboration and rapid iteration, as we move forward with the establishment of the OpenSocial Foundation and look ahead to the continued growth of the social web.