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Currently computers are changing from single isolated devices into entry points into a worldwide network of information exchange and business transactions. Support in data, information, and knowledge exchange is becoming the key issue in current computer technology. Ontologies will play a major role in supporting information exchange processes in various areas. A prerequisite for such a role is the development of a joint standard for specifying and exchanging ontologies. The purpose of the paper is precisely concerned with this necessity. We will present OIL, which is a proposal for such a standard. It is based on existing proposals such as OKBC, XOL and RDF schema, enriching them with necessary features for expressing ontologies. The paper sketches the main ideas of OIL.