Comments on: News At 11

By: karl

karl — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:59:17 +0000

Patents suck and semantics is diverse. “Open Standard” so we are not talking about Open alone as in “Open source”.
A bit like “freedom of speech” and “freedom to pee” doesn’t necessary cover the same notion of freedom. So maybe let’s not fight on the terms but more on the context.

W3C has been on a RAND model like IETF was doing. On 2001, the patent policy was at work again with a RAND possibility. Open source community fought against it including O’Reilly very strongly. It has been very a tough moment in the life of W3C. Different cultures and communities fighting for different goals.

On 20 May 2003 http://www.w3.org/2003/05/12-director-patent-decision-public.html The W3C Director decide that W3C adopts a *Royalty-Free Standards* policy.

So far, IETF and most other standards organizations are still with multiple patent policies, only W3C is royalty-free.

“Open Standards” is enuncunbered standards, not open process as suggested by Mark.

By: Sean Hogan

Sean Hogan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:39:19 +0000

Offered without comment

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative#Relations_with_the_free_software_movement the OSI chose the term open-source to “dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with ‘free software’ in the past.”

By: rsayre

rsayre — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:49:37 +0000

Hi Mark,

I’ll cite http://opensource.org/osr

I don’t think “fashion” dictates those principles.

By: Mark Nottingham

Mark Nottingham — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:47:56 +0000

For better or worse, the “Open” in “Open Standards” has referred to an open *process* and *availability*, not “free not as in beer” for at least a couple of decades. At that time, AIUI what we now call “open source software” was called “free software”; the use of “open” to mean unencumbered is quite new.

Also, it’s important to realise that even then, “open” didn’t necessarily conflict with “pay-to-play.”

That’s not to say that unencumbered, low-barrier-to-entry standards aren’t a worthwhile thing; however, getting hot under the collar because the SDOs haven’t changed their terminology to match fashion isn’t really fair.

By: James Bennett

James Bennett — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:24:15 +0000

Also, I’m reminded of the infamous “Not the comp.text.sgml FAQ” answer to “What’s so great about ISO standardization?”

“It is often said that one of the advantages of SGML over some other, proprietary, generic markup scheme is that “nobody owns the standard”. While this is not strictly true, the ISO’s pricing policy certainly has helped to keep the number of people who do own a copy of the Standard at an absolute minimum.”

By: James Bennett

James Bennett — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:21:59 +0000

Personally I can see “open” as having multiple conflicting meanings, made up of the various combinations of:

* You may implement without paying a fee.
* You may implement without restrictions on use/reuse/distribution of your implementation.
* You may implement under restrictions or fees, but they will be identical for all implementors.
* You may participate in the standardization process.

Only some of these combinations are “open” as in “open source”, but “open source” is not necessarily synonymous with “open”, which may simply mean “everyone has equal access, even if that access isn’t free of charge/restrictions”.