Encyclopedia
| Open standard
Encyclopedia
|
| Tutorials | Encyclopedia | Dictionary | Directory |
|
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, as does the Venezuelan Government. On the standard organisation side, the W3C ensures that its specifications can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. 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-T, the telecommunications branch of 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 reference 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 fully Open. Specific definitions of an open standardITU-T definitionThe 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, 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 definitionThe European Union adopted the following definition in its European Interoperability Framework[6]:
Danish government definitionThe Danish government has attempted to make a definition of open standards [7], which also is used in pan-European software development projects. It states:
French law definitionThe French Parliament approved a definition of "open standard" in its "Law for Confidence in the Digital Economy".[8] The definition is:[9]
Spanish law definitionA Law passed by the Spanish Parliament [10] requires that all electronic services provided by the Spanish public administration must be based on open standards. It defines an open standard as royalty free, according to the following definition:[11]
Venezuelan law definitionThe Venezuelan Government approved a "free software and open standards law".[12] The decree includes the requirement that the Venezuelan public sector must use free software based on open standards, and includes a definition of open standard:[13]
Bruce Perens' definitionOne of the most popular definitions of the term "open standard", as measured by Google ranking, is the one developed by Bruce Perens. [14] His definition lists a set of principles that he believes must be met by an open standard:
Open Source Initiative's definitionThe Open Source Initiative defines the requirements and criteria for open standards as follows:[15] The Requirement An "open standard" must not prohibit conforming implementations in open source software. The Criteria To comply with the Open Standards Requirement, an "open standard" must satisfy the following criteria. If an "open standard" does not meet these criteria, it will be discriminating against open source developers.
Ken Krechmer's definitionKen Krechmer[16] identifies ten "rights":
World Wide Web Consortium's definitionAs one of the important providers of Web technology ICT Standards, notably XML, http, HTML, CSS and WAI, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) follows a process that promotes the development of high-quality standards. The W3C process defines the following set of requirements that the provider of a technical specification must follow for that specification to qualify as an Open Standard.[17]
Digital Standards Organization definitionThe Digital Standards Organization states that "an open standard must be aimed at creating unrestricted competition between vendors and unrestricted choice for users".[18] Its brief definition of "open standard" (or "free and open standard") is "a published specification that is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle". Its more complete definition as follows:
A key defining property is that an open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to improve upon, trust, and extend an open standard over time."[19] This definition is based on the EU's EIF v1 definition of "open standard", but with changes to address what it terms as "vendor capture". They believe that "Many groups and individuals have provided definitions for 'open standard' that reflect their economic interests in the standards process. We see that the fundamental conflict is between vendors who seek to capture markets and raise costs, and the market at large, which seeks freedom and lower costs... Vendors work hard to turn open standards into franchise standards. They work to change the statutory language so they can cloak franchise standards in the sheep's clothing of 'open standard'. A robust definition of "free and open standard" must thus take into account the direct economic conflict between vendors and the market at large."[20] Examples of open standardsSystem
HardwareSee also: Open source hardware.
File formatsSee also: Open format.
Protocols
Programming languages
Other
PatentsIn 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. Version 3 of 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 sanctions a standards body can apply on a non-member when patent licensing is demanded is to cancel the standard, try to rework around it, or work to invalidate the patent. Standards bodies such as W3C and OASIS require that the use of required patents be granted under a royalty-free license as a condition for joining the body or a particular working group, and this is generally considered enforceable. Quotes
See also
ReferencesExternal links
ca:Estàndard obert da:Åben standard de:Offener Standard el:??????? ??????? es:Estándar abierto fa:????????? ??? ko:?? ?? lt:Atviras standartas nl:Open standaard ja:?????? no:Åpen standard pl:Otwarty standard ru:???????? ???????? sv:Öppen standard Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
|
|
top
©2008-2009 TutorGig.com. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement
