The OWF Way

The OWF is an organization that creates legal agreements to enable communities and organizations to create technical specifications in a legally responsible manner.

Towards that end, the following principles (in no particular order) guide work done The OWF Way:

• 1. The OWF's goal is to create agreements for royalty free technical specifications that are compatible with open source and proprietary software licenses.

  2. OWF agreements are designed to allow both individual and organizational participation.

  3. OWF does not dictate how communities and organizations develop technical specifications. Each community and organization is free to adopt development and organizational approaches that best suites their needs.

  4. There are no specific guidelines around the type of specification work that can be done under OWF agreements. However, the work should be technical specifications and not advocacy, policy, or other specifications that aren't implementable in code.

  5. The OWF believes in maximizing the marketplace of ideas. Thus, the OWF does not make any judgement about the quality or market viability of the work produced under OWF agreements. It is perfectly acceptable for OWF groups to produce multiple specifications which overlap or compete.

  6. The OWF does not compete with existing standards bodies, and expects work emerging from the OWF frequently to be input to work in other bodies.