The Open Web Foundation, a non-profit organization intended to help create an "Open Web," was announced Thursday at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Ore.

Specifically, the organization is dedicated to the development and protection of non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies. The effort was announced by David Recordon of blogging tools maker Six Apart.

As described on its Web page, the foundation "is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification."

The foundation is attempting to break the trend of building separation foundations for each specification. Details regarding membership, governance, and intellectual property rights will be posted in the coming weeks.

Individuals such as Geir Magnusson, a vice president and board member at Apache, and Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, are participating in the Open Web Foundation. Organizations that support the foundation include Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, BBC, O'Reilly, Plaxo, Six Apart, SourceForce, and Vidoop.