Definition of a Free and Open Standard
The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard as follows:
- A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
- The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.
- The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.
- The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
- There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of products based on the standard.
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Origins
The Digistan definition of a free and open standard is based on the EU's EIF v1 definition of "open standard" with the language cleaned-up and made more explicit. Our analysis of the importance of vendor capture in determining the openness of a standard comes from this analysis.