Open Standards

Standard as the word suggests could mean that it is mostly accepted and widely used by the industry. Standards are technical specifications that indicate interfaces to facilitate interoperability between different products and services. Interoperability means the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information that has been exchanged. Interoperability is only among the benefits of having standards. The others lie in creating infrastructure, simplifying development and business development opportunities.

Standards that are publicly accessible are open standards. This is not to be confused with open source. While open standards are technical specifications approved by a concensus-based process, open source software is software that is distributed under an OSS license. Under the research paper of Ken Krechmer, there are ten rights leading to open standards. These are:
1. open meeting
2. consensus
3. due process
4. open IPR
5. one world
6. open change
7. open documents
8. open interface
9. open use
10. on-going support
What I have understood from this is that failure to acquire at least one of these ten rights would defeat the real meaning of open standards. In line with this, six principles form B. Perens are as follows:
1. availability
2. maximum end-user choice
3. no royalty
4. no discrimination
5. ability to create extension
6. ability to prevent predatory prices

According to the author of these principles, these make standards open. In my point view, it creates a lot of sense. In open standards, customers are not locked into a specific vendor. Unlike other technologies or vendors which are demanding for patent licensing fees, open standards do not require implementers of royalty.