Open Geospatial Consortium
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 500 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations worldwide collaborate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards for geospatial content and services, GIS data processing and data sharing.
History
A predecessor organization, OGF, the Open GRASS Foundation, started in 1992.
From 1994 to 2004 the organization also used the name Open GIS Consortium.
The OGC website gives a detailed history of the OGC.
Standards
Most of the OGC standards depend on a generalized architecture captured in a set of documents collectively called the Abstract Specification, which describes a basic data model for representing geographic features. Atop the Abstract Specification members have developed and continue to develop a growing number of specifications, or standards to serve specific needs for interoperable location and geospatial technology, including GIS.
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