The Open Metaverse Foundation is organized into eight Foundational Interest Groups (FIGs)
The Linux Foundation has formed the Open Metaverse Foundation (OMF), a group designed to support the development of open-source software and standards for the metaverse.
The group is organized into eight Foundational Interest Groups (FIGs): Users, transactions, digital assets, simulations and virtual works, artificial intelligence, networking, security and privacy and legal and policy. According to the Linux Foundation, these groups provide targeted resources and forums for innovation and to help onboard new contributors.
“We’re still in the early days of the vision for an open metaverse, and we recognize that many open source communities and foundations are working on vital pieces of this iterative puzzle,” said Royal O’Brien, executive director of the OMF. “While the challenges may seem daunting, I’m energized by the opportunities to collaborate with a broad, global community to bring these pieces together as we transform this vision into reality.”
Futurist Cathy Hackl describes the metaverse as the “spatial internet,” a revisualization of internet data and connectivity using 3D rendering, virtual spaces and contextual information about your surroundings. While much of the conversation has focused on its entertainment and commerce possibilities, the market for industrial applications is promising, though nascent.
However, for the metaverse to come together at all, cooperation and interoperability is absolutely critical, a reality that Meta’s Director of Engineering Dan Rampton highlighted during a 2022 keynote at Connect EXPO in Denver. “The truth is that we will have many companies developing for the metaverse,” Rampton said. “There won’t just be one metaverse; this will be a collaboration across companies and experiences […] that will make this happen.”
Anni Lai, head of open source operations and marketing at Futurewei, which is one of the OMF’s founding members, agrees: “Our industry needs innovation through interoperability driven by open source and open standards to realize the promise of the Metaverse — if we’re to build something that benefits everyone—just as was the case with the early architecting of the Internet,” Lai said.
Additional founding members include the ChainHub Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, GenXP, Guangdong Digital Industry Research Institute, Hyperledger Foundation, LF Edge, LF Networking, OpenSDV and Open Voice Network and Veriken.
