[okfn-discuss] DataPortability Workgroup

Wed Jan 9 12:49:08 UTC 2008

Greetings, all,

Consider this an answer to Rufus' call on Monday for lurkers (like  
me) to de-lurkify...

Perhaps some of you have heard of the DataPortability Workgroup, a  
loose collection of individuals and orgs whose mission is "to put all  
[relevant] existing technologies and initiatives in context to create  
a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability." The main site is at

<http://www.dataportability.org/>

I confess that I hadn't heard of the DPW at all until yesterday, when  
reps from Google (Brad Fitzpatrick) and Facebook (Benjamin Ling)  
joined up. A lot of buzz has followed. See, eg,

<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/goog-fb-data.php>
<http://tinyurl.com/2tvgc9>

And a dissenting view...

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=277>

Initiatives like the DPW crop up quite often, of course, and it  
remains to be seen whether this one will get real traction and lead  
to tangible results. At the least, though, it does give some  
indication of what the emerging 'norms' are in this space.

All best,
Nate
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/attachments/20080109/5529410b/attachment-0001.html>