Beyond 'open standard'

[Giacomo Poderi]

Hi,

Stefano Maffulli ha scritto:
> Now, since I am summarizing in this paper what defines a standard that
> is implementable in Free Software, it would be nice to propose also a
> term that is non controversial like 'open standard'.  
[...]
> 1) does it make sense to introduce in the Free Software community a new
> term that is non-controversial and more precise than the generic 'open
> standard'?

Since the paper will try to define another idea of 'standard', that is:
that standard which can be implemented within the Free Software and
therefore compatible with certain kind of licences (such as GPL), yes i
believe that not only it makes sense to introduce another term, but it
is *necessary*.

'Open standard' *already* refers to a set of standards that, in some
cases, would not be compatible with FS.
Using that same name to point to another concept (i.e: only those
standard which have full compatibility with FS), will necessarily lead
to confusion and misunderstanding.

> 2) if yes, what would that term be?

Considering that the adjective 'open' is already used in 'open
standard', i would avoid to restrict that adjective adding more ones to
it: we would end up having not an *appropriate name* but a *descriptive*
term, and since descriptive names are not real names they are very prone
to be shortened by common and daily usage.

To conclude, i would suggest to take some distances from the
'open'/'free' terminology and use a new term, something like:
fair standard
community standard
transparent standard
bright standard
or something like that, i don't have lot of imagination, but i hope i
explained what i meant :P

Greetings,
Giacomo

-- 
   []   Giacomo Poderi <poderi at fsfeurope.org>
 [][][]
   ||   Fellow n.593, http://www.fsfe.org

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! 
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com