Joining and staying connected with the community

Community has links to current issues, discussions, the blog, groups to join, and information about contributing to this project.

Discussions Group

This is the open discussion and mailing group related to GEDCOM in general. The discussions are visible to all at FamilySearch/GEDCOM Discussions; you can post to it after creating a free github account. Subscribe to the mailing list via the “Watch” button at the top of the page.

Public GEDCOM Repository

Become a GitHub GEDCOM Contributor for the next version by contributing to the FamilySearch GEDCOM Specification public repository.

Public GEDCOM.io Website Repository

Become a GEDCOM.io website contributor by contributing to the GEDCOM.io public repository.

Public GEDCOM-registries Repository

Now that we have a documented YAML format we have created a useful extension registry. The community is allowed the submissions of YAML files for extensions to a common repository where they may be easily located. In addition to general interoperability gains, this will assist in an extension-to-standard workflow and in defining additional calendars and events.

Issue Tracker

You can review issues being discussed for the working version of FamilySearch GEDCOM.

Third-Party Implementation Progress

FamilySearch has consolidated on one page the companies and websites committed to adopting the FamilySearch GEDCOM 7 standard. A growing list of companies around the world are adopting the new FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 standard. As they do, users will find transferring genealogy files from one application to another easier and easier. The appeal of FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 is international. In Germany alone, more than a dozen companies and organizations have adopted it for their products. You can review the current implementation progress of FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.

If you are associated with an application and want to add it to this listing or change its existing entry in this listing, send an email to GEDCOM@FamilySearch.org.

GEDCOM Steering Committee

The GEDCOM standard is overseen by a steering committee who meet weekly to discuss issues and pull requests on the GEDCOM repositories.

Most of the work of developing and refining the standard is done between those meetings, either by individuals or project teams. That work consists of identifying issues, proposing changes, and converting those change proposals into pull requests. The weekly steering committee meetings primarily discuss the issues and pull requests resulting from that project team or individual work.

The GEDCOM Steering Committee was initially formed by FamilySearch from volunteers representing several companies and groups. When the current GEDCOM Steering Committee notices that someone not on the committee is making consistent helpful contributions spanning several areas of the specification over an extended time, they invite that person to join the steering committee.

Project Teams

The GEDCOM Steering Committee also organizes Project Teams for more complex projects.

If you would like additional information or request to participate in one or more of the following Project Teams, send an email to GEDCOM@familysearch.org putting “Project Team: team name(s)” in the subject.

Active Project Teams

  • Names - This project has been created to develop the PERSONAL_NAME_STRUCTURE, with aims of supporting a much wider range of human names and of supporting applications that process them. The GEDCOM 5.5.1 standard defined a PERSONAL_NAME_STRUCTURE. This was refined slightly in FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0. It works well for most North-American and some European names, but it unable to properly represent names from many other cultures.

    Join the GEDCOM Name Project by going to the GEDCOM-name public repository.

  • Citations - This project has been created to develop the ability to reliably capture and exchange EE-style citations, Chicago-style citations, or an agreed subset of both.

    Join the GEDCOM Citations Project by going to the GEDCOM-citations public repository.

Future Project Teams

  • Places - consider changing from a comma-separated place hierarchy to a set of linked place records.
  • Relationships - allowing varying definitions of families, roles and relationships.
  • Hypothesis - sharing and collaborating on supposition of facts not yet provable with source records.
  • Sources - more source-centric capabilities including multi-person events and multi-purpose sources.
  • DNA - how to represent DNA information.

Additional Areas of Participation

  • Tools - identify software tools, sample code and sample files that will be helpful to create and upgrade FamilySearch GEDCOM processing.
  • Guides - author and/or maintain FAQs, best practices, reference implementation guides, and other information that will be helpful to software developers.
  • Sample Files - is a sub-area of work that will benefit Tools, Guides, and Development.