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Posted to commits@ossie.apache.org by jb...@apache.org on 2026/07/11 04:09:18 UTC
(ossie-website) branch main updated: Add Apache Ossie incubator announcement blog post and update homepage copy (#4)
This is an automated email from the ASF dual-hosted git repository.
jbonofre pushed a commit to branch main
in repository https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/ossie-website.git
The following commit(s) were added to refs/heads/main by this push:
new e10c018 Add Apache Ossie incubator announcement blog post and update homepage copy (#4)
e10c018 is described below
commit e10c018fb2551af2094183235fc4448f1a82afe4
Author: jklahr <jk...@yahoo.com>
AuthorDate: Fri Jul 10 21:09:14 2026 -0700
Add Apache Ossie incubator announcement blog post and update homepage copy (#4)
---
data/home.yml | 9 +-
.../updates/posts/ossie-enters-apache-incubator.md | 146 +++++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 150 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/data/home.yml b/data/home.yml
index f384a0f..d5be99c 100644
--- a/data/home.yml
+++ b/data/home.yml
@@ -30,10 +30,9 @@ hero:
title_line1: "Apache Ossie (incubating) is the"
title_accent: "universal standard for semantic data"
subtitle: >-
- Apache Ossie (incubating) is an industry-wide specification effort
- to standardize how we exchange semantic metadata across analytics, AI
- and BI platforms, providing a vendor neutral, single source of truth
- for semantic data.
+ Apache Ossie (incubating) is an industry-wide specification effort to standardize how we exchange
+ semantic metadata across analytics, AI and BI platforms, providing a vendor neutral, single source
+ of truth for semantic data. Ossie was previously known as Open Semantic Interchange (OSI).
buttons:
- text: "View Specification"
link: "https://github.com/apache/ossie/blob/main/core-spec/spec.md"
@@ -174,7 +173,7 @@ about:
# --- Members Section ---------------------------------------------------------
members:
heading: "Working Group Contributors Affiliation"
- subtitle: "Leading organizations collaborating to build the future of semantic interchange"
+ subtitle: "Leading organizations collaborating as part of Ossie to build the future of open semantic interoperability"
list:
- name: "Alation"
logo: "alation-logo.png"
diff --git a/docs/updates/posts/ossie-enters-apache-incubator.md b/docs/updates/posts/ossie-enters-apache-incubator.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9c87ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/updates/posts/ossie-enters-apache-incubator.md
@@ -0,0 +1,146 @@
+---
+# Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+# or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
+# distributed with this work for additional information
+# regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
+# to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+# "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+# with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+# software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+# "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+# KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
+# specific language governing permissions and limitations
+# under the License.
+#
+date: 2026-07-10
+authors:
+ - jklahr
+slug: ossie-enters-apache-incubator
+title: "Apache Ossie (Incubating): The New Name for Open Semantic Interchange"
+description: >-
+ The Open Semantic Interchange project has been accepted into the Apache
+ Incubator under a new name — Apache Ossie (incubating). The spec, the
+ community, and the mission haven't changed, but the name, governance
+ home, and long-term trajectory have.
+---
+
+# Apache Ossie (Incubating): The New Name for Open Semantic Interchange
+
+*Apache Ossie is currently undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF).*
+
+If you've been following the Open Semantic Interchange project — the open
+specification for semantic layer and ontology — there's an important update.
+The project has been accepted into the Apache Incubator under a new name:
+**Apache Ossie (Incubating)**.
+
+The spec, the community, and the mission haven't changed, but the name,
+governance home, and long-term trajectory have.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+## Why the new name?
+
+You may know this project as Open Semantic Interchange, or OSI. As the
+community prepared for incubation — the next step in the project's open source
+journey — they decided to rename the project "Ossie" to avoid confusion with
+other projects in the open source ecosystem that share the OSI acronym.
+
+The mascot is a kangaroo carrying semantic metadata in its pouch as it hops
+between systems in the data stack.
+
+Going forward:
+
+- The project is **Apache Ossie (Incubating)**
+- References to "OSI" as a project name are historical
+- The specification and the YAML-based format for defining metrics, dimensions,
+ and relationships is unchanged
+
+If you've been building on Open Semantic Interchange, nothing breaks. The name
+changed, but the spec didn't.
+
+## What is Ossie?
+
+Ossie is an open specification for both semantic layer and ontology. It defines
+a vendor-neutral format for expressing business metrics, dimensions, and their
+relationships as well as broader business concepts and rules. It allows any
+tool — whether BI platforms, query engines, or AI agents — to consume and
+produce semantic definitions without loss of meaning.
+
+The problem it solves is straightforward: the same business concept (say,
+"Monthly Active Users") is often defined inconsistently across an
+organization's CRM, data warehouse, and BI tools. When a human analyst or an
+AI agent runs a query, they shouldn't have to guess which definition is
+correct. Ossie provides a shared, machine-readable format that encodes not
+just the data but the intent and business meaning behind it.
+
+## Why the Apache Software Foundation?
+
+Incubating Ossie with the Apache Software Foundation ensures that it remains
+an open standard with no single controlling entity. Given that the goal of
+Ossie is to provide industry-wide standardization of semantic data, ensuring
+that it has a vendor-neutral ground to operate in is crucial.
+
+Under incubation, Ossie operates with public mailing lists, GitHub-based
+development, a formal discussion-and-vote process for spec changes, and
+committership earned through contribution rather than employer affiliation.
+Note that as part of this transition, all mailing lists referring to Open
+Semantic Interchange will be retired; community members should use the
+ASF-provided project resources linked below instead.
+
+## The community behind Ossie
+
+Ossie didn't start as a single-company project, and it already isn't governed
+as one. Since the repository opened in November 2025:
+
+- More than **100 commits and 35 merged pull requests** have landed from
+ contributors at Snowflake, Dremio, Salesforce, Databricks, dbt Labs,
+ RelationalAI, GoodData, and Honeydew
+- The participating coalition has grown from **17 launch partners to [more than
+ 50 organizations](https://ossie.apache.org/#get-involved)**
+- Three working groups (Metric Language, Catalog, and Ontology) operate with
+ dedicated leads, meetings, and public channels
+- Implementations including the Ossie-to-dbt Semantic Layer converters and an
+ Apache Polaris™ converter are already merged
+
+## What's next
+
+Snowflake was one of the founding organizations behind Open Semantic
+Interchange, and we'll continue as an active contributor to Apache Ossie as
+the project grows under ASF governance.
+
+As with any Apache project, the community will decide the direction together.
+There is a <a href="https://github.com/apache/ossie/blob/main/ROADMAP.md" target="_blank">large roadmap of potential additions</a>
+to Ossie, and there are a few areas we're excited about and hope to work with
+the community to contribute proposals for:
+
+- Deepening the spec's expressiveness to accommodate what real enterprise
+ models demand, including an expression language spec, advanced metric logic,
+ windowing functions, and complex relationships
+- Building converters for additional platforms and frameworks so that adopting
+ Ossie doesn't require ripping out what you already have
+- A standardized semantic query specification that any engine can support
+- Integration with Apache Polaris so that semantic models are discoverable
+ directly from the catalog
+
+None of this is predetermined. It will go through the same open
+discussion-and-vote process as everything else in the project.
+
+## Get involved
+
+Ossie is transitioning to ASF infrastructure as part of incubation. Whether
+you're building an AI agent, BI tool, or a query engine that needs to
+understand business context, Ossie is the community working to make sure you
+don't have to tackle semantic interoperability alone.
+
+- **[View Repository](https://github.com/apache/ossie)** — Browse the spec,
+ raise PRs, and contribute code
+- **[Start a Discussion](https://github.com/apache/ossie/discussions)** —
+ Share ideas, propose features, and ask questions
+- **[Join Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/apache-ossie/shared_invite/zt-42zw4rflt-Gpve8_NFJq7AsdAQTY~SCg)** —
+ Chat directly with contributors
+- **[Subscribe to dev@](mailto:dev-subscribe@ossie.apache.org)** — Main
+ development and community discussion list