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Open Semantic Interchange: Community Update and What's Next

The Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) initiative continues to evolve as an open, community-driven effort to define a shared standard for semantic interoperability across data and AI systems.

Since our last update, we've seen meaningful progress — not just in the specification itself, but in the breadth of participation and the depth of technical discussions shaping it.

The Spec Is Live — and Actively Evolving

The OSI specification is now publicly available, and development is happening in the open:

github.com/open-semantic-interchange/OSI

The repository has become an active hub for discussion and iteration. Community members are engaging on a range of topics via GitHub Discussions, including:

  • How to represent metrics and derived logic in a portable way
  • Tradeoffs in semantic model composability across tools
  • Aligning OSI with existing catalog and metadata systems
  • Approaches to representing ontologies and relationships
  • Developer ergonomics and tooling for adoption

These conversations are helping refine not just the spec itself, but also how it can be practically implemented across diverse ecosystems.

Working Groups Taking Shape

To support deeper collaboration, OSI has established a set of focused working groups. These groups are open to contributors and are driving forward specific areas of the specification:

Working Group Focus Area
Advanced Metrics & Expression Language Portable representation of complex calculations and derived logic
Composability How semantic models can be composed, extended, and reused across tools
Catalog Integration Alignment with existing data catalogs and metadata systems
Ontology Representation Modeling relationships, hierarchies, and domain knowledge
Model Converters & Developer Tools Tooling to convert between OSI and vendor-specific formats

Each group is exploring both conceptual and implementation-level questions, helping ensure that OSI remains grounded in real-world use cases.

A Public Roadmap

We've also introduced a public roadmap to provide transparency into upcoming priorities and areas of focus. This roadmap will continue to evolve alongside community input and serve as a shared reference point for contributors and adopters alike.

Growing Ecosystem Participation

OSI is seeing increasing engagement from across the data ecosystem. New working group participants include:

This growing diversity of perspectives is critical to ensuring the standard remains broadly applicable and not shaped by any single tool or vendor.

How to Get Involved

OSI is an open initiative, and participation is encouraged at all levels. Here are a few ways to get started:

All contributions are reviewed by the working group, and the project follows an open-source model with broad and growing participation.

Even if you're not part of a formal working group, you can still engage by:

  • Forking the repository and proposing changes
  • Participating in discussions around architecture and use cases
  • Following the repository to stay up to date with ongoing progress

Looking Ahead

We're encouraged by the level of engagement and the collaborative spirit emerging around OSI. The conversations happening today are helping shape a more interoperable future for semantic models across data platforms, tools, and AI systems.

As the community continues to grow, we're excited to see how OSI evolves — not as a single implementation, but as a shared foundation built by and for the ecosystem.