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Open standard

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Open standards are publicly available and implementable standards. By allowing anyone to obtain and implement the standard, they can increase compatibility between various hardware and software components, since anyone with the necessary technical know-how and resources can build products that work together with those of the other vendors that base their designs on the standard (although patent holders may impose "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalty fees and other licensing terms on implementers of the standard).

Many technical specifications that are sometimes considered standards are proprietary rather than being open, and are only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright for the specification.

Being an open standard also does not necessarily imply that no licenses to patent rights are needed to use the standard or that such licenses are available for free. For example, the standards published by the major internationally recognized standards bodies such as the ITU, ISO, and IEC are ordinarily considered open, but may require patent licensing fees for implementation.

Open standards which can be implemented by anyone, without royalties or other restrictions, are sometimes referred to as open formats.

There is little really universal agreement about the usage of either of the terms "open" or "standard". Some people restrict their use of the term "open" to royalty-free technologies, while others do not; and some people restrict their use of the term "standard" to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis, while others do not.

Specific definitions of an open standard

ITU-T definition

The ITU-T, a standards development organization (SDO) that is one of the three sectors of the ITU (a specialized agency of the United Nations) has a TSB director's Ad Hoc group on IPR that produced the following definition in March 2005, which the ITU-T uses for its purposes [1]:

The ITU-T has a long history of open standards development. However, recently some different external sources have attempted to define the term "Open Standard" in a variety of different ways. In order to avoid confusion, the ITU-T uses for its purpose the term "Open Standards" per the following definition:
"Open Standards" are standards made available to the general public and are developed (or approved) and maintained via a collaborative and consensus driven process. "Open Standards" facilitate interoperability and data exchange among different products or services and are intended for widespread adoption.
Other elements of "Open Standards" include, but are not limited to:
  • Collaborative process – voluntary and market driven development (or approval) following a transparent consensus driven process that is reasonably open to all interested parties.
  • Reasonably balanced – ensures that the process is not dominated by any one interest group.
  • Due process - includes consideration of and response to comments by interested parties.
  • Intellectual property rights (IPRs) – IPRs essential to implement the standard to be licensed to all applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis, either (1) for free and under other reasonable terms and conditions or (2) on reasonable terms and conditions (which may include monetary compensation). Negotiations are left to the parties concerned and are performed outside the SDO.
  • Quality and level of detail – sufficient to permit the development of a variety of competing implementations of interoperable products or services. Standardized interfaces are not hidden, or controlled other than by the SDO promulgating the standard.
  • Publicly available – easily available for implementation and use, at a reasonable price. Publication of the text of a standard by others is permitted only with the prior approval of the SDO.
  • On-going support – maintained and supported over a long period of time.

European Union definition

In its "European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services" (Version 1.0, 2004), the European Union adopted the following definition:

  • The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
  • The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
  • The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
  • There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

Danish government definition

The Danish government in the 2004 document "Definitions of Open Standards" has attempted to make a definition of open standards, which also is used in pan-European software development projects. It states:

  • The costs for the use of the standard are low.
  • The standard has been published.
  • The standard is adopted on the basis of an open decision-making procedure.
  • The intellectual property rights to the standard are vested in a not-for-profit organisation, which operates a completely free access policy.
  • There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

Examples of open standards

Practices:

System:

  • GSM (a mobile communications system specified by 3GPP)

Hardware:

  • ISA (a specification by IBM for plug-in boards to IBM-architecture PCs, later standardized by the IEEE)
  • PCI (a specification by Intel Corporation for plug-in boards to IBM-architecture PCs)
  • AGP (a specification by Intel Corporation for plug-in boards to IBM-architecture PCs)

Software:

  • HTML/XHTML (specifications of the W3C for structured hyperlinked document formatting)
  • SQL (a specification approved by ANSI and ISO, with multiple generations of design and additional less official variants)
  • IP (a specification of the IETF for transmitting packets of data on a network - specifically, IETF RFC 791)
  • TCP (a specification of the IETF for implementing streams of data on top of IP - specifically, IETF RFC 793)
  • PDF/X (a specification by Adobe Systems Incorporated for formatted documents, later approved by ISO as ISO 15930-1:2001 [2])
  • OpenDocument (a specification by OASIS for office documents, approved by ISO as ISO/IEC 26300)

Patents

In 2002 and 2003 there was some controversy about using reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing for the use of patented technology in web standards. Bruce Perens and others have argued that the use of patents restricts who can implement a standard to those able or willing to pay for the use of the patented technology. The requirement to pay some small amount per user, is often an insurmountable problem for free software or open source implementations which can be redistributed by anyone. Royalty free (RF) licensing is preferred by Open Source adepts. The GNU General Public License includes a section that enjoins anyone who distributes a program released under the GPL from enforcing patents on subsequent users of the software or derivative works.

Quotes

  • EU Commissioner Erkki Liikanen: "Open standards are important to help create interoperable and affordable solutions for everybody. They also promote competition by setting up a technical playing field that is level to all market players. This means lower costs for enterprises and, ultimately, the consumer." (World Standards Day, 14 October, 2003) [3]

See also

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