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This paper intends to provide a basis for the discussion and development of an Open Source Initiative for a "Framework for Distributed Industrial Automation and Control (4DIAC) based on the new IEC 61499 standard. The general understanding of the authors is that an open source strategy is an adequate means for pushing current developments within the industrial automation domain and bringing together interested partners to focus and unite their concerns on a distributed and flexible automation environment. One main point is also to provide a stable basis for industrial appliances and further research into next generation distributed automation and control systems based on the IEC 61499 standard.A look at the current status of the developments for IEC 61499 shows, that these targets may not have been attained. In the opinion of the authors, the targets presented above need a common and publicly available reference framework. Therefore the general idea of the 4DIAC initiative is to provide such an open framework for the IEC 61499 standard that gives the opportunity to establish an automation and control environment based on the three main targets, portability, configurability and interoperability.