OASIS

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a membership body that writes open standards for structured documents, security, and business data. Members propose a specification, a technical committee develops it, and the approved text is published for anyone to implement.

How a Specification Gets Published

• A committee. Members who care about the problem draft the text and vote on it.
• An open result. The approved specification can be implemented without joining the body.
• Not a product. The body does not sell the software that implements the specification.

Standards Body and an Implementer

Compared	The Standards Body	An Implementer
What it produces	A written specification	Software or a service that follows the specification
Who may use the result	Anyone, once the text is published	The implementer’s own customers
A change to the meaning	Only by revising the specification	A private extension, which other implementations may not share