[smufl-discuss] Proposal to move development of SMuFL to the W3C

[dspreadbury]

Dear SMuFL community,

If you have been following the discussion in the MusicXML developer community over the last 18 months, you will probably know that there has been extensive discussion about transitioning the development of MusicXML to an open standards body.

Over the past decade, MusicXML has has become the de facto standard for the interchange of symbolic music. However, given the sweeping corporate changes in the world of music notation software over the past three years, there has been growing concern among the community of software developers, publishers, and end users who rely on the standard that its future may not be completely secure.

Michael and MakeMusic have taken the concerns of the community very seriously, and have today announced their intention to move future development of MusicXML to a W3C Community Group. Read more here:

http://forums.makemusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2959

At the same time, Steinberg is also announcing its intention to transition the development of SMuFL to the same W3C Community Group. SMuFL's role in the music software ecosystem has grown in importance over the past two years, and given the natural overlap between the developer communities of these two standards, it makes sense for SMuFL and MusicXML to be developed (to some degree still to be determined) in parallel.

SMuFL will remain an open standard, and indeed its potential future status as a W3C Community Group Final Report and, further in the future still, a W3C Recommendation, guarantees its continued openness.

I recommend that you take the time to read the introductory material on the W3C web site about the lightweight structure of W3C Community Groups:

https://www.w3.org/community/about/

Please note that, if the transition to a W3C Community Group goes ahead, you will need to sign the W3C Contributor License Agreement (CLA) in order to continue your participation in discussion and development of SMuFL. You can read the CLA here:

https://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/cla/

At this stage, I welcome any questions, comments, or concerns about this transition. There will be discussion on the MusicXML forum, no doubt, and discussion is also welcomed on the SMuFL discussion list.

I am sure that this potential transition represents a significant and positive step in the development of both SMuFL and MusicXML, and will allow both standards to grow both in adoption and fitness for purpose into the future.

Thanks,

Daniel


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Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, Frankenstrasse 18b, D-20097 Hamburg, Germany

Phone: [phone] | Fax: [phone] | www.steinberg.net

President: Andreas Stelling | Managing Director: Hiroshi Sasaki, Hirofumi Osawa

Registration Court: Hamburg HRB 86534

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