[Openstds] An emerging understanding of Open Standards

[Georg C. F. Greve]

FYI.

[ http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards ]

An emerging understanding of Open Standards

Thursday 04 October 2007

Open Standards have been somewhat of a holy grail for some time now.
Interoperability and vendor-independence, the IT industries' equivalent
of eternal life, are the prize for those who find the grail that are
Open Standards. This conquest took decades, has spawned many different
definitions of what people might call an Open Standard, but has also
left many of the seekers with a much better understanding of what it is
we really seek.

Some of the more interesting definitions are

  * The Open Standards definition in the European Interoperability
    Framework, which had some good success in achieving interoperability
    and has consequently come under heavy criticism from Microsoft and
    its interest groups.

  * The Open Standards definition by Bruce Perens, which includes
    practice recommendations, based on the understanding that a
    definition is worthless without practice to uphold it.

  * The definition of an Open Standard adopted in Denmark as part of
    motion B 103 of the Danish Parliament

But there are also many others. Based on practical experience, the
understanding of Open Standards continued evolving in various fora,
including the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) at the United
Nations Internet Governance Forum, where governments, industry and civil
society discuss Open Standards in an open and inclusive way. There are
also the recent discussions around the European Interoperability
Framework, the controversy around ISO approval of MS-OOXML, the various
discussions on interoperability in almost any country, the effects of
lacking interoperability on procurement cost, including at WIPO, and so
on.

Allow me to share with you five criteria that have emerged from dialog
between stakeholders, and constitute a concise and balanced definition
of what an Open Standard should be. Such a standard is

 1. subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
    manner equally available to all parties;

 2. without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
    formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
    Standard themselves;

 3. free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
    any party or in any business model;

 4. managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in
    a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
    parties;

 5. available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors,
    or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

It is obviously impossible for a new format or protocol to meet the
fifth criteria, so there will have to be a grace period for new
protocols of formats until it is fully applied. There also needs to be
active and continuous checking of Open Standards against this definition
to prevent abuse or false labelling, but this would be true for any
definition. In balance I do onsider the five points presented aboveto be
rather solid.

One of the first projects to adopt this definition is Science, Education
and Learning in Freedom (SELF), including the Internet Societies in the
Netherlands and Bulgaria, various Universities, some NGOs (including
FSFE) and is funded by the European Union in its framework programmes.

Ideally we should all come to some common understanding of what
constitutes an Open Standard. Considering that there are some parties
that base their business model on lack of Open Standards and have a
commercial interest in falsely declaring proprietary formats as Open
Standards, that is unrealistic.

But if the majority of politics, industry and society at large came to a
common understanding on the issue, that would probably be sufficient. So
I hope that we'll be able to continue this discussion further at the IGF
in Rio.


-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
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