Definition of open standards:

standards which fulfil the following criteria:

  • are maintained through a collaborative and transparent decision-making process that is independent of any individual supplier and that is accessible to all interested parties;
  • are adopted by a specification or standardisation organisation, or a forum or consortium with a feedback and ratification process to ensure quality;
  • are published, thoroughly documented and publicly available at zero or low cost;
  • as a whole have been implemented and shared under different development approaches and on a number of platforms from more than one supplier, demonstrating interoperability and platform/vendor independence;
  • owners of patents essential to implementation have agreed to licence these on a royalty free and non-discriminatory basis for implementing the standard and using or interfacing with other implementations which have adopted that same standard. Alternatively, patents may be covered by a non-discriminatory promise of non-assertion. Licences, terms and conditions must be compatible with implementation of the standard in both proprietary and open source software. These rights should be irrevocable unless there is a breach of licence conditions.