summary of Re: Beyond 'open standard'

[Jeroen Dekkers]

At Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:41:03 +0200,
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
> 
> Because in the end, and "Open Standard" is something of an oxymoron:
> if only one or a few players are using it, it is merely a proprietary
> format or interface, but not a standard.

An Open Standard isn't an oxymoron IHMO. You've got proprietary
standards like MP3 and de facto standards like MS Word.

The Dutch government actually requires patents to be licensed
royalty-free in their definition of Open Standard (see
http://www.ososs.nl/index.jsp?alias=watisos, in the middle there is
the English definition). I've seen the EC using this definition too,
but got critised for that by BSA/CompTIA/etc, so I'm not sure they are
still doing that.

I think using this definition is the way to go: nobody is against Open
Standards, the only thing you've convince people of is that a standard
isn't open when patents aren't licensed royalt-free.

Jeroen Dekkers