About OpenDGD

◆ About

An open standard, kept honest.

OpenDGD is published and stewarded by NCB Hazcheck. Hazcheck is a National Cargo Bureau company. NCB has worked on the safe carriage of cargo at sea since 1952, and Hazcheck builds the IMDG classification and validation software used across the industry. We took a production IMDG declaration engine and opened up the format behind it.

Since 1952

NCB at sea

CC BY 4.0

Spec licence

Apache 2.0

Code licence

Charter "The data format is a shared, open commons. How deeply you validate against the IMDG Code is where products compete, including ours." OpenDGD governance charter

How it is governed

Open now, neutral by design.

Five principles hold the standard steady while it grows.

Open by construction

The spec, schema, rendering algorithm and conformance suite are openly licensed. Anyone may implement OpenDGD, free of charge, with no engine to license.

Neutral format, real competition

The data format and rendering are the shared commons. How deeply an implementation validates a declaration is where products differ, ours included.

The IMDG Code governs

Where OpenDGD and the IMDG Code disagree, the Code wins. The standard tracks IMDG amendments and never contradicts them.

Backward compatible

Changes are additive within a major version. Anything that breaks an existing document ships with a migration note and a major bump.

Public process

Proposals and changes happen in the open, with a route to a neutral steering group as more organisations adopt the standard.

Built on real work

Drawn from software that classifies and validates dangerous goods in production, not designed in the abstract.

Get involved

Adopt it, build on it, or help steer it.

OpenDGD is meant to outlast any single vendor. As implementations and adopters come on board, NCB Hazcheck will convene a steering group with representation beyond ourselves and hand editorial control of the specification to it before v1.0.