The History of XDI.ORG
XDI.ORG was originally founded as the XNS Public Trust Organization (XNSORG) in July, 2000. Its charter was to serve as the public steward for a body of intellectual property contributed by OneName Corporation (now Cordance Corporation). These patents covered what is now called "dataweb" technology, a new way to form persistent links and long-term, trusted data sharing relationships over electronic networks.
The first job of XNSORG was to help develop royalty-free open standards that would enable broad adoption of dataweb technology. XNS (eXtensible Name Service) and the first XNS naming services were announced in September 2000.
XNS attracted interest from many individuals and organizations seeking new solutions to the growing problems of privacy and trust on the Internet.
In July 2002, XNSORG published the XNS 1.0 specifications with Visa International, Gemplus, Nomura Research Institute, and Wave Systems as sponsors. In January 2003 XNSORG contributed these specifications to OASIS to help form the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) Technical Committee.
The OASIS XRI TC published the XRI Generic Syntax and Resolution Specification 1.0 (PDF) on January 9, 2004. Based on this specification for persistent, location-independent abstract identifers, the XDI (XRI Data Interchange) Technical Committee was formed in February, 2004. The XDI TC is currently defining the specifications for XDI as a protocol for trusted, peer-to-peer data sharing, linking, and synchronization.
On June 6, 2004, XNSORG changed its identity to XDI.ORG to reflect this new direction and to embark on the second phase of its charter to establish global services that facilitate interoperability and enable trusted data interchange among members of the XDI community.