2 What is a Free/Open Document Standard? I present here the following requirements, which according to me make a proposal a free document standard (hence forth FDS). In order to qualify as an FDS a proposal must meet all the following applicable conditions. In the following section I will try to demonstrate that OOXML does not pass through this filter, while ODF does^2 <#sdfootnote2sym>. The criteria, obviously, are not invented for excluding OOXML but based on sound reasoning keeping in mind the requirements of a good digital society. 1 Decodability One of the *first condition* to be met by a FDS is that the data is encoded by any application according to an explicitly stated and published convention such that any document saved in such a format can be decoded (interpreted) as per the published specification. This condition ensures that the data created by the users in an electronic format is accessible (interpretable) not only in the application in which it is created, but in all future versions of the same application, as well as in all other applications that implement the standard. This ensures not only the endurance of the data, but also its use (interpretation) in future. Since an official document created by any agency for egovernance (Government or any public/private body) is legally required to have such endurance, any proposal must meet this condition. The most widely used term for this condition is 'inter-operability'. The term 'decodability' is used in place of 'inter-operability' since the latter is not possible without the former. It is scientific to use an operational term, for operational term does not have multiple-interpretations. 2 Use of preexisting standards The proposed standard must use existing standards of the similar kind. In the context of a document standard it is important to remind ourselves that a document is a collection and composition of /codes/. All code is arbitrary to begin with, till it becomes a socially accepted convention. Standardization is the process by which we arrive at such social acceptance. It is possible to invent several distinct arbitrary codes to represent the same thing. This latter possibility is good for expressing creativity, but is not desirable to indulge in such an activity if reusability and endurance of electronic documents is our primary practical objective. If reencoding is required for technical or practical reasons, it is important to invent one. SGML (ISO 8879) is a good example of a standard markup, since such a technical requirement was felt by the industry at that time. When XML was proposed as an open standard, it did not throw away the existing standard, though it was possible to create an arbitrary new language, instead they made use of SGML, included an additional contraint to it, and also adopted another open standard Unicode (ISO 10646). This is how they went ahead by creating an exemplary standard to serve the purpose of multi-lingual document exchange. HTML was re-represented in XML and became XHTML. This example may be considered as a paradigm case of how standards are created and extended to meet technical and practical demands. Let us keep this example while handling the case at hand. 3 No Private Language Components The proposed standard must not have private language components embedded within it. A private language is an encoding, decoding of which is not declared publicly. Though this sounds like a very important requirement, it is redundant, because by adhering strintly to the first condition we already precluded this possibility. I am committing redundancy in order to make the argument complete and explicit, particularly to handle the case at hand. 4 Implementation Independance One of the most important objectives of agreeing to some standard is to ensure its implementation by multiple vendors. The objective of the standard should not be defined to conform to a single implementation. 5 Transparent Collaborative Production Process The standard must be developed by involving and inviting all the stake holders in a transparent collaborative consensus driven process. This is to ensure that the standard is not dominated by any one interest group. There must be a room for inviting contributions, suggestions, criticisms and improvements from any interested agency. Since a standard is required to be upheld by several agencies, it is necessay to take everyone into confidence.^3 <#sdfootnote3sym> 6 Rationale for deviating from the preexisting standards If there are technical or practical reasons for not using an existing standard, it is necessary to specify the relation or lack of such relation with the existing standards, particularly when the existing standards are already adopted by several agencies. This possibility ensures two things. One it allows inventing new ways of expressing, and two it helps in establishing relations to known canons of understanding. This is the way modern science and technology manages to innovate as well as relate to history. 7 Demonstrate incommensurability If the innovation is so novel that it is incommensurable with the existing set of conventions, then it is indeed a celebration time, for scientists and engineers indeed look forward to listen to such radical innovations. However, the inventors do have the burden to demonstrate that the new innovation is incommensurable with the existing canons, and why it should be considered for a standard, specifically if their innovation is to be regarded as a standard. In any case, incommensurability is a very rare case, and such events are exceptional. Exceptional cases are better not handled by standardization process. Because, standardization is about recognizing a procedure, to make a known art into a social convention. 8 Freedom to implement the standard And last, as usual not the least, is the condition that every agency must be given freedom to implement the specification without royalty. If there exist any restrictions in use due to say some patents or other such rights, they must be explicitly exempted before agreeing to confer the FDS status to a proposal.^4 <#sdfootnote4sym> There may be many other parameters on the basis of which one may consider if the proposal is a free/open standard. Though I have not made references in formulating them, these are stated keeping the already published ideas and following the several debates on the issue in mind. Given enough time, one can make a comparision to the existing understanding on the subject.