Today, I read an article on netzpolitik.org, stating that the German state secretary Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, IT commisioner of the German government, emphasized the importance of open standards to be independent from single vendors in an interview with the German computer magazine c’t. Only open standards should be used as mandatory standards by the authorities.
I especially liked the short mnemonic description of the criteria for an open standard, originally published here. I thought about an english version of it and came up with the following, maybe someone considers it useful:
The criteria of open standards are (based on FSFE):
- (a)pplicable (without restrictions): free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model
- (e)xisting (implementations): available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.
- (i)ndependent (of a single vendor): managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties
- (o)pen (specification): subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties
- (u)ntainted (with dependencies to closed standards): without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves
