8.5.5 Standards and Specications
There are various sources that provide information about standards or specications.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB
The Linux Foundation is an independent nonprot organization that promotes the
distribution of free and open source software. The organization endeavors to
achieve this by dening distribution-independent standards. The maintenance of
several standards, such as the important LSB (Linux Standard Base), is supervised
by this organization.
http://www.w3.org
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is one of the best-known standards orga-
nizations. It was founded in October 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee and concentrates
on standardizing Web technologies. W3C promotes the dissemination of open,
license-free, and manufacturer-independent specications, such as HTML, XHTML,
and XML. These Web standards are developed in a four-stage process in working
groups and are presented to the public as W3C recommendations (REC).
http://www.oasis-open.org
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)
is an international consortium specializing in the development of standards for
Web security, e-business, business transactions, logistics, and interoperability
between various markets.
http://www.ietf.org
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an internationally active cooperative
of researchers, network designers, suppliers, and users. It concentrates on the
development of Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet
by means of protocols.
Every IETF standard is published as an RFC (Request for Comments) and is
available free-of-charge. There are six types of RFC: proposed standards, draft
standards, Internet standards, experimental protocols, information documents,
and historic standards. Only the rst three (proposed, draft, and full) are IETF
standards in the narrower sense (see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1796.txt).
http://www.ieee.org
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an organization that
draws up standards in the areas of information technology, telecommunication,
medicine and health care, transport, and others. IEEE standards are subject to a
fee.
http://www.iso.org
The ISO Committee (International Organization for Standards) is the world's largest
developer of standards and maintains a network of national standardization insti-
tutes in over 140 countries. ISO standards are subject to a fee.
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