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								  <title>Open Standards – Overview</title>

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								      <a href="/freesoftware/freesoftware.html">Free Software</a>

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								<h1 class="p-name">Open Standards</h1>


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								<div id="introduction">

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								<img src="/freesoftware/standards/robot-protest-dark_2016_plussy.png" alt="robot protest"/>

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								<p><a href="/freesoftware/standards/def.html">Open Standards</a> are the foundation

								of cooperation in modern society. They allow people to share all kinds

								of data freely, prevent vendor lock-in and other artificial barriers to

								interoperability, and promote choice between vendors and technology solutions.

								Open Standards are implementable with Free Software, and thus provide full

								competition in the market. FSFE advocates for fair competition, interoperability of

								solutions, and choice for consumers. Open Standards are necessary prerequisite

								to ensure these freedoms.</p>


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								<h2 id="what-is-a-technical-standard">What is a technical standard?</h2>


								<p>A technical standard is a set of commonly agreed rules in regard to technical

								systems. It is usually documented in a so-called 'standard specification'

								that describes ways to consistently organise information so that it can

								be understood and used by multiple independent applications. Standards

								which are used for information storage are called 'formats', and those

								for transmitting information are called 'protocols'.</p>


								<p>A standard establishes common ground that provides means for interoperability

								and competition. The antipode of standardisation is monopoly: users of

								one product or service can only interoperate with users of the same product

								or service. Therefore, standards are used to enable competition for the

								public benefit.</p>


								<p>Standards can also be beneficial for innovation by allowing all actors

								on the market to innovate on top of the standard and build their own services

								in order to serve the standard.</p>


								<h2 id="why-open-standards">Why Open Standards?</h2>


								<p>The problem arises when a standard is owned by one market player that uses

								their position to control the further development of the standard, or tries

								to manipulate it through licensing policies in order to exclude or include

								some specific groups of actors. In this case, the standardisation is used

								for contrary purposes than promoting competition and interoperability.</p>


								<p>The full competition in the market is, therefore, provided by standards

								that are open. As Open Standards are freely available without any restrictions,

								they allow standardised technology to be used in products and services

								without any a priori advantage based on the ownership of the standard.

								As a consequence, the access to technology is allowed to all actors on

								the market irrespective of one's business model.</p>


								 <h3 id="what-is-an-open-standard">What is an 'open' standard?</h3>


								 <p>Open Standards are implementable with Free Software. If a standard does

								 not meet the following criteria, it discriminates against Free Software and

								 cannot be thus called an 'open' standard:</p>


								 <p>An <a href="/freesoftware/standards/def.html">Open Standard</a> refers to a format

								 or protocol that is:</p>


								 <ol>

								<li>Subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in

								a manner equally available to all parties;</li>

								<li>Without any components or extensions that have dependencies

								on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open

								Standard themselves;</li>

								<li>Free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation

								by any party or in any business model;</li>

								<li>Managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in

								a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;</li>

								<li>Available in multiple complete implementations by competing

								vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all

								parties.</li>

								</ol>


								<p>This way the standard ensures that technology is accessible for everyone,

								irrespective of business-model, size, or exclusive rights portfolio. </p>


								<h2 id="why-should-a-stanard-be-minimalistic">Why should a standard be minimalistic?</h2>


								<p>The aim of standards is to establish a common ground in technology and

								enable different applications to interact with each other. With more and

								more data being digitally stored, it is more important to ensure its

								portability between different applications. This is why it is essential

								to make sure that the format one chooses to store data is accessible

								with multiple applications, irrespective of vendor or a technical solution.</p>


								<p>This is why the standard needs to be not only open, but also

								<a href="/freesoftware/standards/minimalisticstandards.html">'minimalistic'</a>,

								in order to solve the technical problem adequately, and allow as many

								implementers of that standard as possible. In other words, there is a need

								to assess whether the standard is as simple as possible, and as complicated

								as necessary.</p>


								<p>Overburdened standards with multiple unnecessary features give their

								vendors an advantage: it is more difficult for another implementer to

								adequately read the format, and the customer is forced to a vendor lock-in.

								In addition, standards bloated with rarely used features leave backdoors

								and vulnerabilities for malicious attackers to take advantage of.</p>


								<h2 id="standard-that-is-implementable-with-free-software">Standard that

								is implementable with Free Software</h2>


								<h3 id="reference-implementation">Reference implementation</h3>


								<p>For software standards the actual standard is defined through both

								the formal specification and the actual implementation. Acquiring the

								formal specification is often not enough in order to implement the standard

								for complex digital systems. For any company wishing to implement the

								standard, knowledge of existing implementations can be as valuable as

								the formal specification, as this helps to avoid the

								extended trial-and-error process for resolving ambiguities in formal

								specification.</p>


								<p>Hence, for a standard to be sufficiently 'open', the openness needs to

								address both the specification and implementation.</p>


								<p>Consequently, for open implementations it is economically more beneficial

								to publish reference implementations under a Free Software licence.

								This will allow the reference implementation to be freely available and

								also to act as a  formal specification without the institutional process of

								 standard setting.</p>


								<h3 id="patents-in-standards">Patents in standards</h3>


								<p>Sometimes, the standard specification includes technical solutions

								that are needed in order to implement the standard. These technical

								solutions can be protected by patents. Whoever wishes to adopt and implement

								the standard has to, therefore, acquire the appropriate licence from the

								patent-holder.</p>


								<p>Industry has turned to different licensing practices in order to overcome

								the issue of patents essential to standard implementation: for example

								'royalty-free' (RF) or an alternative 'fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory'

								(FRAND) terms. <a href="/freesoftware/standards/why-frand-is-bad-for-free-software.html">FRAND

								terms are incompatible with Free Software</a>. Furthermore, due to the

								fact that FRAND are usually kept secret, it is impossible to prove whether

								the imposed terms are objectively 'fair' or 'non-discriminatory'.

								Consequently, FRAND can be used as a tool to manipulate the standardisation

								process to exclude competition.</p>


								<p>While RF licensing addresses only the royalty-payment criteria,

								it does not address other restrictions that may be placed on adoption

								and implementation of a standard by Free Software. In this regard, the

								licensing policies of patented technology in standardisation have to be

								compatible with the widest range of actors on the market, as the purpose

								of standardisation is to promote competition and to allow innovation on

								top of it.</p>


								<p>It is noteworthy that hardly any new system in information and communications technology (ICT) is built without

								the use of Free Software, and the exclusion of companies basing their

								products on Free Software from standardisation can significantly hamper

								innovation. Therefore, the appropriate licence for standard-essential-patents

								is the one that does not place any restrictions to the standard implementation

								with Free Software, i.e. 'restriction-free', according to the

								<a href="#what-is-an-open-standard">Open Standard definition</a>.</p>


								<h2 id="what-can-you-do">What can you do?</h2>


								<blockquote>

								<h3 id="as-a-citizen">As a citizen</h3>


								<p>

								<ul>Insist on Open Standards: don't let your government, university, employer,

								or a local public administration push you into using locked down formats.</ul>

								</p>

								</blockquote>


								<blockquote>

								<h3 id="as-a-politician">As a politician</h3>


								<ul>

								<li>Promote policies that in practice ensure competition and innovation

								in standardisation, i.e. minimalistic Open Standards implementable with

								Free Software.</li>

								<li>Promote licensing policies that are based on 'restriction-free' terms

								in order to achieve the widest adoption of standards and allow their

								implementation by all actors on the market.</li>

								<li>Prioritise the use of Open Standards in public procurement and software

								development in order to increase the interoperability of all software

								solutions used in public sector.</li>

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