I looked over the website briefly, and I couldn't find an answer to this question so I'm going to ask here. I am not asking this tongue-in-cheek, these are serious questions:
* By "open source standard," what do they mean? I don't see any evidence they're on an RFC track, so this would be "standard" in what way?
* Why? I've never needed a resume in JSON format, but that is anecdotal. They don't really say why they're pursuing this on the site, except why they chose JSON.
Good luck, either way! Making something isn't easy, so I applaud any effort to do anything.
Assuming this takes off and everyone uses it (you be the judge of those odds), I can see a standard format being really useful for both employers and job board websites.
Let's say you had a bank of resumes -- you could easily find all resumes that know Java and have had at least 2 jobs and an active GitHub repo, and automatically send out a request to their references.
Currently, you have to read an unformatted PDF and extract the info manually -- it's not the end of the world, but it gets tedious if you're dealing with lots of resumes.
It would be really useful for the people making the resume also. Right now the current mainstream advice is to use Microsoft Word for creation and editing and then (typically) to submit as PDF. Both of those document standards are proprietary and opaque. If you two computers that don't have the same operating system, you're probably SOL for tweaking your resumes across computers as well.
You are right, I am still researching how to manage a standard formally hence why the site wasn't meant to go on HN just yet. If you have any good advice or links to advice for writing and managing standards that would be fantastic.
For example, what is an "RFC track"? I was also hoping that Github Issues might be able to replace the mailing list style of managing standards, what do you think?
* By "open source standard," what do they mean? I don't see any evidence they're on an RFC track, so this would be "standard" in what way?
* Why? I've never needed a resume in JSON format, but that is anecdotal. They don't really say why they're pursuing this on the site, except why they chose JSON.
Good luck, either way! Making something isn't easy, so I applaud any effort to do anything.