open standard

 

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it.

The terms "open" and "standard" have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage. The term "open" is usually restricted to royalty-free technologies while the term "standard" is sometimes restricted to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis.

The definitions of the term "open standard" used by academics, the European Union and some of its member governments or parliaments such as Denmark, France, and Spain preclude open standards requiring fees for use. Also Venezuelan Government does.

Many definitions of the term "standard" permit patent holders to impose "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalty fees and other licensing terms on implementers and/or users of the standard. For example, the rules for standards published by the major internationally recognized standards bodies such as the IETF^[1], ISO, and IEC permit their Standards to contain specifications whose implementation will require payment of patent licensing fees (none of these organizations states that they grant "open standards", but only "standards"). ITU has a definition of "open standard" that allows "reasonable and non-discriminatory" licensing.

The term "open standard" is sometimes coupled with "open source" with the idea that a standard is not truly open if it does not have a complete free/open source implementation available ^[2].

Open standards which specify formats are sometimes referred to as open formats.

Many specifications that are sometimes referred to as standards are proprietary and only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright on the specification. As such these specifications are not considered to be Open.

Specific definitions of an open standard

ITU-T definition

The ITU-T is a standards development organization (SDO) that is one of the three sectors of the International Telecommunications Union (a specialized agency of the United Nations). The ITU-T has a Telecommunication Standardization Bureau director's Ad Hoc group on IPR that produced the following definition in March 2005, which the ITU-T as a whole has endorsed for its purposes since November 2005 ^[3]:

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.

The ITU-T, ITU-R, ISO, and IEC have harmonized on a common patent policy ^[4] under the banner of the WSC. Anyway, the above ITU-T definition cannot be considered also applicable in ITU-R, ISO and IEC contexts, since the Common Patent Policy ^[5] does not make any reference to "open standards" but only to "standards".

European Union definition

The European Union adopted the following definition in its European Interoperability Framework^[6]:

USE OF OPEN STANDARDS To attain interoperability in the context of pan-European eGovernment services, guidance needs to focus on open standards. The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:

• 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 has attempted to make a definition of open standards ^[7], which also is used in pan-European software development projects. It states:

• An open standard is accessible to everyone free of charge (i.e. there is no discrimination between users, and no payment or other considerations are required as a condition of use of the standard)
• An open standard of necessity remains accessible and free of charge (i.e. owners renounce their options, if indeed such exist, to limit access to the standard at a later date, for example, by committing themselves to openness during the remainder of a possible patent's life)
• An open standard is accessible free of charge and documented in all its details (i.e. all aspects of the standard are transparent and documented, and both access to and use of the documentation is free)

French law definition

The French Parliament approved a definition by law of "open standard" included in its "Law for the Confidence in the Digital Economy" ^[8] that also can be understood as royalty free, since demands no any restriction to implement the specifications. The definition is:

• It is understood by open standard any communication, interconnection or interchange protocol and any interoperable data format whose specifications are public and without any restriction of access or to implement it.

Note: as literal as possible translation from French done by the Project "Estándares Abiertos"^[9].

Spanish law definition

The Spanish Parliament approved what could be called "the e-Administration Law" of Spain ^[10]. The law includes, among other things, the warranty that all the public electronic services provided by Spanish public administrations must be granted based, at minimum, on open standards. Additionally, it defines open standard as royalty free, with the following definition:

DEFINITIONS

Open standard: That one which matches the following conditions:

• be public and its use be available in a free [non paid] way or under a cost that does not imply a difficulty of access.
• its use and application will not be subject to the payment of any intellectual or industrial property right.

Note: as literal as possible translation from Spanish done by the Project "Estándares Abiertos" ^[11].

Venezuelan law definition

The Venezuelan Government approved what could be called "the free software and open standards law" of Venezuela ^[12]. The decrete includes the exigence that Venezuelan public sector will use free software based on open standards and it includes a (royalty free) definition of open standard:

Article 2: to the practice of this Decrete it will understood as

k) Open standards: technical specifications, published and controlled by some organization in charge of its development, that have been accepted by the industry, being at disposal of everybody to be implemented in free software or other [type of software], promoting the competitivity, interoperability and flexibility.

Note: as literal as possible translation from Spanish done by the Project "Estándares Abiertos" ^[13].

Bruce Perens' definition

One of the most popular definitions of the term "open standard", as measured by Google ranking, is the one developed by Bruce Perens. His definition lists a set of principles that he believes must be met by an open standard:

1. Availability: Open Standards are available for all to read and implement.
2. Maximize End-User Choice: Open Standards create a fair, competitive market for implementations of the standard. They do not lock the customer in to a particular vendor or group.
3. No Royalty: Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may involve a fee.
4. No Discrimination: Open Standards and the organizations that administer them do not favor one implementor over another for any reason other than the technical standards compliance of a vendor’s implementation. Certification organizations must provide a path for low and zero-cost implementations to be validated, but may also provide enhanced certification services.
5. Extension or Subset: Implementations of Open Standards may be extended, or offered in subset form. However, certification organizations may decline to certify subset implementations, and may place requirements upon extensions (see Predatory Practices).
6. Predatory Practices: Open Standards may employ license terms that protect against subversion of the standard by embrace-and-extend tactics. The licenses attached to the standard may require the publication of reference information for extensions, and a license for all others to create, distribute, and sell software that is compatible with the extensions. An Open Standard may not otherwise prohibit extensions.

Ken Krechmer's definition

Ken Krechmer^[14] identifies ten "rights":

1. Open Meeting
2. Consensus
3. Due Process
4. Open IPR
5. One World
6. Open Change
7. Open Documents
8. Open Interface
9. Open Use
10. On-going Support

W3C's definition

As one of the important provider of ICT Standards, in the area of Web technologies (XML, http, HTML, CSS, WAI, etc), the international World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) follows a process that promotes the development of high-quality standards.

Using the W3C process as a model, we define the following set of requirements that a provider of technical specification must follow to qualify as Open Standard.

• transparency (due process is public, and all technical discussions, meeting minutes, are archived and referencable in decision making)
• relevance (new standardization is started upon due analysis of the market needs, including requirements phase, e.g. accessibility, multi-linguism)
• openness (anybody can participate, and everybody does: industry, individual, public, government bodies, academia, on a worldwide scale)
• impartiality and consensus (guaranteed fairness by the process and the neutral hosting of the W3C organization, with equal weight for each participant)
• availability (free access to the standard text, both during development and at final stage, translations, and clear IPR rules for implementation, allowing open source development in the case of Web technologies)
• maintenance (ongoing process for testing, errata, revision, permanent access)

Examples of open standards

System:

• World Wide Web architecture specified by W3C^[15]
• 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)
• IP (a specification of the IETF for transmitting packets of data on a network - specifically, IETF RFC 791)
• NTCIP (National Transportation Communications for Intelligent Transportation System Protocol)
• 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 ^[16])
• OpenDocument (a specification by OASIS for office document formats, approved by ISO as ISO/IEC 26300 and also named ODF)

Patents

In 2002 and 2003 the controversy about using reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing for the use of patented technology in web standards increased. Bruce Perens, important associations as FSF or FFII 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/open source software implementations which can be redistributed by anyone. Royalty free (RF) licensing is generally the only possible license for free/open source software implementations. 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.

One result of this controversy was that many governments (including the Danish, French and Spanish governments singly and the EU collectively) specifically affirmed that "open standards" required royalty-free licenses. Some standards organizations, such as the W3C, modified their processes to essentially only permit royalty-free licensing. Oasis-Open allows committees to operate either on a RAND basis or a royalty-free basis, but OASIS does say to grant "open standards" when they are not royalty-free.

Patents for software, formulas and algorithms are currently enforceable in the US but not in the EU. The European Patent Convention Article 52 paragraph (2)(c) expressly prohibits algorithms, business methods and software from being covered by patents. The US has only allowed them since 1989 and there has been growing controversy in recent years as to either the benefit or feasibility.

A standards body and its associated processes cannot force a patent holder to give up its right to charge license fees, especially if the company concerned is not a member of the standards body and unconstrained by any rules that were set during the standards development process. In fact, this element discourages some standards bodies from adopting an "open" approach, fearing that they will lose out if their members are more constrained than non-members. Few bodies will carry out (or require their members to carry out) a full patent search. Ultimately, the only sanction a standards body can apply when patent licensing is demanded is to cancel the standard or try to rework around it.

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) ^[17]

• Jorma Ollila, Chairman of Nokia's Board of Directors: "... Open standards and platforms create a foundation for success. They enable interoperability of technologies and encourage innovativeness and healthy competition, which in turn increases consumer choice and opens entirely new markets," (^[18], 2006)

• W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee: "The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal. You can't propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it." ^[19]

See also

• Open system (computing)
• Open format
• OpenDocument - an open standard for office document formats
• Open specifications
• Standard (disambiguation)
• Conformity assessment
• Standardization
• Standards organization
• International standard
• Vendor lock-in
• Embrace, extend and extinguish
• Network effect
• Free software
• Legitimacy of standards

References

External links

• Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, Open ePolicy Group, Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems
• Bruce Perens: Open Standards: Principles and Practice
• Ken Krechmer: The Principles of Open Standards
• Bob Sutor: Open Standards vs. Open Source: How to think about software, standards, and Service Oriented Architecture at the beginning of the 21st century
• European Commission: Valoris report on Open Document Formats
• The New York Times: Steve Lohr: 'Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards'
• UNDP-APDIP International Open Source Network: Free/Open Source Software: Open Standards Primer
• OpenStandards.net: An Open Standards Portal
• Is OpenDocument an Open Standard? Yes! develops a unified definition of "open standard" from multiple sources, then applies it to a particular standard
• Open Source Initiative: Open Standard Requirement for Software
• Open Standards: Definitions of "Open Standards" from the Cover Pages
• Standard Categories and Definitions: Categories and definitions of the different types of standards - by FFII Open Standards Work Group

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