Using AMQP

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Using the AMQP Specification

The AMQP specification was created by a group of companies, the AMQP Working Group, determined to provide an open specification to enable the commoditization of enterprise-class messaging. The specification continues to be developed by the Working Group under a contract that ultimately requires AMQP to be published to a standards body. The contract also ensures that those contributing to the specification immediately grant to implementors the necessary copyright and patent licenses for the contributions they made to the specification on each and every publication (draft or final).

The AMQP Working Group encourages vendors and open source projects alike to implement the AMQP specification to provide open messaging across as many software and hardware offerings as possible. In particular, you don't need to be a member of the Working Group to build an implementation, but DO READ THE LICENSE!

When implementing the AMQP specification, an implementor may want to provide feedback on the specification. We believe it is important to encourage and enable feedback so that issues discovered during real implementations are incorporated back into the specifications. A feedback loop exists to ensure that anyone can provide feedback into the specifications (see below).

All work created by the working group is published under the following license

Contributing to the Specification

You do not have to join the AMQP Working Group to provide input into the specifcation. The Working Group has an open approach to incorporating feedback into AMQP. We particulary welcome suggestions and protocol "bug reports" from those implementing the specification in software or hardware.

Anyone has the ability to report an issue to the specification working group, but they must first execute the Reviewer License Agreement (RLA). Please fax a signed copy to +1 978 392 1004.

Through the RLA you provide a license for the AMQP Working Group to use your feedback, allowing the team to incorporate it into the specification whilst keeping the specification open and royalty free. The need to sign the RLA in order to contribute is not unusual; our process is similar to those used by the W3C and the Apache Software Foundation.

This approach means that the specification will always be open and implementable by anyone without royalty or commercial limitation. We feel that this is a very strong model for keeping this work entirely open.

Joining the AMQP Working Group

In most cases, the RLA should be sufficient to enable you to suggest improvements and view ongoing work to the AMQP Specification. However if you wish to participate in writing sections of the specification, you should consider joining the Working Group.

The AMQP Working Group accepts new members by a vote of the Working Group PMC. The working group may choose to have an organization/company join based on it's merits or by evaluating individuals contribution to AMQP.

If an individual demonstrates a deep understanding of the protocol and provides significant contributions to the specification, that individual may receive an invitation to join the AMQP Working Group. On such acceptance, the individual is required to sign an agreement ensuring they grant ongoing and consistent licenses to the work, including any necessary patent rights. Again, all this is to ensure the ongoing open and royalty free nature of AMQP. This is similar in spirit to how the Apache Software Foundation meritocracy processes works, with the additional aspect that companies can also be accepted onto the Working Group.

Pre1-0 versions of the AMQP specification is published with the intent of getting feedback from the community in order to ensure that final versions of the specification are mature and ready for use by developers and businesses.

Some contacts at the Working Group

To contact the Working group please register and mail us from the Contact Us tab.

Development of the Specification

Development lists are located here:
dev list achieves