February 19, 2021
Press Release: ATLANTA, Feb. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Application Group (OAGi) and the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) have signed an agreement to produce industrial ontologies. OAGi will establish an IOF membership category, accept ownership of ontology artifacts developed by the IOF, and release them under MIT and CC BY 4.0 (or similar) licenses. Further ontology development will occur in the context of OAGi and ontology artifacts released by OAGi.
"Ontologies are increasingly getting serious attention in the enterprise to facilitate interoperability," said Jim Wilson, OAGi President & CEO. "OAGi and its members are eager to support ontology development and implementation to improve enterprise interoperability."
"Industrial systems are incredibly complex, notably in the aerospace and defense industries," said IOF Governance Board Member and Airbus Specialist in Industrial System Digital Continuity, Rebeca Arista. "Use of rigorously-developed ontologies have the potential to accelerate interoperability projects. The transition to OAGi will provide the legal and organizational framework for companies to use the IOF ontologies, confident that intellectual property concerns have been addressed."
"I had the privilege of playing a leading role in the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry and the development of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)," said IOF Governance Board Member Barry Smith, Director, National Center for Ontological Research. "The work that the IOF has accomplished to date is promising and I am pleased that BFO has proved a useful foundation for the work. I look forward to continuing my contribution to the IOF's work and promoting the use of the ontologies we publish."
"There are many ways in which STEP users can benefit from the IOF ontologies," said Dr. Martin Hardwick, President STEP Tools, Inc. and Convener ISO Digital Manufacturing. "For example, IOF may be useful in classifying the roles of products in digital manufacturing networks, where a production item from one organization is purchased to be used as a tool by another."
OAGi and IOF invites organizations to express their interest in joining the IOF under OAGi by completing a form at http://bit.ly/iof-interest.
OAGi plans to issue an invitation for companies to join OAGi under its new IOF membership type on 8 March 2021. There will be no membership fees initially. OAGi and IOF plan to complete intellectual property transfer and transition to OAGi operations by the end of March 2021.
More information about OAGi resources, services, and activities is available at OAGi.org or by contacting Member Services at Member.Services@OAGi.org or +1 404-402-1962. More on IOF can be found at IndustrialOntologies.org
The Open Applications Group (OAGi) is a non-profit organization with the mission to reduce the cost of integration by developing inter-operable, cross-functional, cross-industry, data-model-driven, and extensible standards to meet the challenge of a rapidly-changing global digital economy. OAGi.org
The Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) is an ad-hoc organization with the mission to create a set of core and open reference ontologies that spans the entire domain of digital manufacturing. IndustrialOntologies.org
