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This article is about standards organisation. For other uses, see Oasis (disambiguation).

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards. A Web service (also Web Service) is defined by the W3C as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction

Members of the consortium decide how and what work is undertaken through an open, democratic process. Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system

Technical work is carried out under the following categories: Web Services, e-Commerce, Security, Law & Government, Supply Chain, Computing Management, Application Focus, Document-Centric, XML Processing, Conformance/Interop, and Industry Domains.

Contents

History

OASIS was first formed as SGML Open in 1993 as a trade association of SGML tool vendors to cooperatively promote the adoption of SGML through mainly educational activities, though some amount of technical activity was also pursued including an update of the CALS Table Model specification and specifications for fragment interchange and entity management. The Standard Generalized Markup Language ( ISO 88791986 SGML) is an ISO Standard Metalanguage in which one can define Markup languages The CALS Table Model is a standard for representing tables in SGML/XML

In 1998, with the movement of the high tech industry to XML, SGML Open changed its emphasis from SGML to XML, and changed its name to OASIS Open to be inclusive of XML and any future structured information standards. Don't change "Extensible" The focus of the consortium's activities also moved from promoting adoption (as XML was getting lots of attention on its own) to developing technical specifications. In July 2000 a new technical committee process was approved. With the adoption of the process the manner in which technical committees were created, operated, and progressed their work was regularized. At the adoption of the process there were five technical committees; by 2004 there were nearly 70.

During 1999 OASIS was approached by UN/CEFACT, the committee of the United Nations dealing with standards for business, to jointly develop a new set of specifications for electronic business. The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, ( UN/CEFACT) has a mission to improve the ability of business trade and administrative organizations The United Nations ( UN) is an International organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in International law, International security The joint initiative, called "ebXML" and which first met in November 1999, was chartered for a three year period. Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language, commonly known as e-business XML, or ebXML (pronounced ee-bee-ex-em-el as it is typically referred to as is At the final meeting under the original charter, in Vienna, UN/CEFACT and OASIS agreed to divide the remaining work between the two organizations and to coordinate the completion of the work through a coordinating committee. In 2004 OASIS submitted its completed ebXML specifications to ISO TC154 where they were approved as ISO 15000.

Specific standards under development by OASIS technical committees

Patent disclosure controversy

Like many bodies producing open standards, OASIS has a patent disclosure policy requiring participants to disclose intent to apply for software patents for technologies under consideration in the standard. An open standard is a Standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition Like the W3C, which requires participants to offer royalty-free licenses to anyone using the resulting standard, OASIS offers a similar Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode, along with a Royalty Free on RAND Terms mode and a RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) mode for its committees [1] . Royalty Free refers to a type of contract between a two entities (the licensor and licensee that is employed when licensing the rights to use content such as photographs The verb license or grant license means to give permission The noun license is the document demonstrating that permission Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing ( RAND) is a term for a type of Licensing typically used during Standardization processes

Controversy has arisen because this licensing allows publication of standards requiring licensing fee payments to patent holders, the use of which would effectively eliminate the possibility of free/open source implementations of these standards. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. Further, contributors could initially offer royalty-free use of their patent, later imposing per-unit fees, after the standard becomes accepted.

Supporters of OASIS point out this could occur anyway since an agreement would not be binding on non-participants, discouraging contributions from potential participants. Supporters further argue that IBM and Microsoft shifting standardization efforts from the W3C to OASIS is evidence this is already occurring. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer

Events

OASIS Adoption Forum

In 27-29 November 2006 the third annual OASIS Adoption Forum was held in London, focusing on security. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom.

See also

External links

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