EPUBCheck Fundraising

The Publishing Business Group recently released an RFP to find developers to maintain and improve EPUBCheck. We have selected DAISY for the task.

Do you use EPUBCheck? Of course you do! It is a key part of every publisher’s tool chain. Even if you don’t realize that you use EPUBCheck, it is a part of your organization. Every major retailer requires files that are validated by the opensource tool, EPUBCheck, before they are accepted for distribution. As the tool upon which the whole ebook industry relies, EPUBCheck 4.0.2 released in 2016 is anxiously awaiting an upgrade. EPUBCheck was built and has been maintained by volunteer developers. Contributors have come from different organizations and individuals with interests in validating EPUB. But the last few years have been a developmental dry spell.

In parallel, the EPUB 3 Community Group has done tremendous work to bring the latest up to date specification of EPUB, version 3.2, with a full compatibility to EPUB 3.0. EPUB 3.2 files have to be validated by EPUBCheck for a full acceptance in the digital supply chain. The first goal of the EPUBCheck improvement and maintenance project is to add validation for EPUB 3.2 in early 2019.

The W3C Publishing Business Group has decided that it is time to hire a development team to update and maintain this crucial tool. DAISY will be working on EPUBcheck over the next several years to release several updates. We are raising funds to pay the development team. Please read more about this project and how you can contribute at https://www.w3.org/publishing/epubcheck_fundraising.