summary of Re: Beyond 'open standard'

[Stefano Maffulli]

On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 18:34 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> 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.

I see your point and I agree with it: fair may be not a good term in
English after all.  In Italian fair is translated into 'equo' (for
example, fair trade is commercio equo e solidale).  'Equo' (latin
aequus) carries a more evident meaning of equity.  The message to send
is that there is truly no discrimination.

Looking at my English dictionary the only term with the same latin root
in English is 'equitable' but that is not an easy word, I guess.  Is
there some other term that can summarize Royalty-free and
Non-discriminatory?

Jeroen said:
> I've seen the EC using this definition too,

It's not the EC that uses that definition but IDABC
(http://europa.eu.int/idabc/) in its European Interoperability Framework
(http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/2319/5644)

I think that definition of Open Standard is too restrictive also for
free software, not only for BSA, but this is another topic and I'll save
it for the next discussion :)

cheers
stef