Often in open source, a project resource or tool (such as a website, wiki or chat forum) will vanish or become inaccessible to the community when the person who created it loses interest or moves on. Valuable data about the project and its history is lost. The Visibility and Archival Permanence Policy is designed to prevent that loss of access and information.
This policy is outlined further in Section 8 of the OASIS Open Projects Rules.
Visibility All official project tools - software, workflow and communication tools used in the maintenance of the Project - must be publicly visible, and all threaded and mail list discussions must be publicly archived.
Contributions, comments, decisions, records of decisions and other resources of the Project, including web pages, documents, mailing lists and any other records of discussions, must be located only on the resources designated or approved by OASIS. Projects may not conduct official business or technical discussions, store documents, or host web pages on servers or systems not designated or approved by OASIS.
Once a Project Repository has been created, it will remain open as a resource for public use and reference, and continuing repository contributions or comments, regardless of closure of the Project, under the Archival Permanence rule below.
Archival Permanence OASIS will not inhibit open and free access to all of the material contributed to each Project Repository, as open and freely available resources.
Some contributed material may be treated as superseded or deprecated by Maintainers or by version control methods, but neither Maintainers nor any other party shall delete content. The original form of each contribution shall continue to be available for review, and use according to its licensure, through appropriate version control or document management methodologies.