OASIS was founded in 1993 under the name SGML Open. Originally a consortium of small software vendors and large customers devoted to developing guidelines for interoperability among SGML products, OASIS changed its name in 1998 to reflect the inclusion of the consortium CGM Open and the growing popularity of the XML subset of SGML.

Today OASIS is an organization that engenders participation from industry, bringing together competitors and industry standards groups. Through open discussion and debate, the OASIS process reconciles conflicting perspectives to create XML implementations that are representative of the industry as a whole.