Saw this on LinkedIn, of all places. Apparently, the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee have decided to cease activities.

What I found interesting was one of the comments. It asked “What’s your DocBook exit strategy?” Seriously? Do you think your DocBook setup will somehow stop working? Will you no longer be able to author your content? Publish? Parse? What?

Working groups are shut down all the time. They finish work, they move on to other things, their financing changes, etc. The W3C shut down its XML activity around ten years ago. Did your XML software stop working? No, of course not. While there is not going to be an XML 2.0 anytime soon, if ever, XML 1.0 is just fine. It’s everywhere.

I have no doubt DocBook will continue.