| Open Standard |
Article Index for Open |
Website Links For Open Standard |
Information AboutOpen Standard |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT OPEN STANDARD | |
| standards | |
|
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 such as Denmark, France, and Spain Spain preclude open standards requiring fees for use. 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 RFC 2026, 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 Tim Simcoe: 'Chapter 8: Open Standards and Intellectual Property Rights', To appear in ''Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm'' . 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 ITU-T on Open Standards : : 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:
The . Anyway, the above ITU-T definition cannot be considered also applicable in ITU-R, ISO and IEC contexts, since the Common Patent Policy ISO TC on Common Patent Policy does not make any reference to "open standards" but only to "standards". European Union definition The European Union adopted the following definition European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services, page 17 (Version 1.0, 2004) :
Danish government definition The Danish government has attempted to make a definition of open standards "Definitions of Open Standards", 2004 , which also is used in pan-European software development projects. It states:
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" "Loi nº 2004-575" for the Confidence in the Digital Economy", June, 21nd 2004 that also can be understood as royalty free, since demands no any restriction to implement the specifications. The definition is:
Note: as literal as possible translation from French done by the Project "Estándares Abiertos" "Estándares Abiertos" . Spanish law definition The Spanish Parliament approved what could be called "the e-Administration Law" of Spain "Ley 11/2007" of Public Electronic Access of the Citizens to the Public Services, June, 22nd 2007 . 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:
Note: as literal as possible translation from Spanish done by the Project "Estándares Abiertos" "Estándares Abiertos" . 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 must be met by an open standard: #Availability: Open Standards are available for all to read and implement. #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. #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. #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. #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). #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[http://www.csrstds.com/openstds.html Ken Krechmer, The Meaning of Open Standards] identifies ten "rights": #Open Meeting #Consensus #Due Process #Open IPR #One World #Open Change #Open Documents #Open Interface #Open Use #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.
EXAMPLES OF OPEN STANDARDS System:
WWW architecture Hardware:
Software:
PDF Format Specification )
PATENTS In 2002 and 2003 the controversy about using Reasonable And Non-discriminatory (RAND) Licensing for the use of patented technology in Web Standard s increased. Bruce Perens and others have argued that the use of Patent s 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 government 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. 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 on Open Standards
Nokia Foundation Award to Mårten Mickos , 2006)
Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ SEE ALSO
REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|