summary of Re: Beyond 'open standard'

Alex Hudson home at alexhudson.com
Wed Jul 19 17:34:10 UTC 2006


On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 19:22 +0200, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> Alex Hudson suggested:
> > Probably "royalty free standard"
> 
> It is a fine term, but probably it carries some confusion: what is
> royalty free?  The patent license?  or the access to the specification?

I think generally it's well-accepted to mean implementing the standard -
it's not about how much it costs to get a standard document, or not.

The issue with it is that while the terms may be royalty-free, people
could dream up other restrictions. 

> Giacomo Poderi suggested:
> > to take some distances from the 'open'/'free' terminology and use a
> > new term, like:
> > fair standard
> 
> and I stop here.  I like this: fair is a good term. Like in "fair trade"
> or "fair play" it carries a positive meaning, non discrimination is
> included.  IMHO we have a clear winner here.  What do you think?

I think it's very much in the eye of the beholder and too descriptive.
If you start asking for fair standards, people will say their standards
are fair.

"Reasonable" has already been used to mean "you can pay a reasonable
fee" for our licence. I don't see why fair couldn't mean "you can pay a
fair fee" for our licence.

Cheers,

Alex.




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