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Open standardsContent of this page:1. Why Open Standards?Open standards are important because we still want to be able to read our documents in 5, 10 or maybe 100 years. Because we want to be able to communicate, independent of which computer platform or word processing program we happen to be using. And because it is dangerous to let our digital history depend on a proprietary data format that some private company owns.What happens if that company goes down? What happens in 50 years, when the programs we have today will not run on the computers produced by that time? What will happen to our data? Old letters and business documents, historical information, the national archive, electronic hospital journals. It is our data, and we must protect them if we want to keep them. We must ensure that our data is saved in a format which is documented, so that we always in the future will be able to write an applications to read these data. More close to everyday life, however, is the document format incompatibility of today. Did you ever get a Word document you couldn't open? Then you know what I mean. The situation we have today may be bad for Windows users, but it is even worse for people using Linux, UNIX or Mac OS. That is not acceptable. We do not have to use the same kind of pen and paper to read each others letters. We have a universal way of exchanging documents on paper. Let us have that for electronic communications, too. It is all about communication. That is what we want to use computers for. Communication. So we want document interoperability. We want open document formats, and we want to use them instead of the proprietary ones.
Links to articles about open standards: 2. What is an open standard?That is a very good question.Some people define an open standard as a standard which is documented, available for all to use, and free of charge. Others put less restrictions on the definition of "open" - the standard must be available but you might have to pay to see it, and it might contain patents, in which case you must pay for using it. Other people set much more focus on openness in the standardization process - it must be possible for everybody to influence what the standard is going to look like. And then again, what does that mean? Does it mean that anybody can apply for a seat in a working group? Or that anybody can comment on the proposals? Or that anybody should be able to afford coming to the meetings? And who says it's a standard? Must it be made by an international standards organization, or can it be made by a private company, or just by some people happening to be sitting together realizing the need for a standard? These matters are eagerly discussed, and attempts have been made to define "Open Standards". Maybe someday we will have an international acceptable definition of Open Standards, like we have today of Open Source. Until then, we must settle with different suggestions, and a general idea of some minimum criteria for an Open Standard. LinuxLab.dk takes the point of view that an open standard should at least be documented, available to all, and free of charge to implement and use. Links:
3. Data formats recommended by LinuxLab.dkIn LinuxLab.dk we are more interested in usefulness and interoperability, than in the openness in the standardization process. However, open standards are missing today in many areas.Therefore, today we must recommend some formats which are not very open at all. This is what we recommend today:
More linksWladawsky-Berger on Linux and open standards - mostly about Linux and Open Source, but says that open standards are necessary for integration and infrastructure software.Wireless Elite Join Forces for Open Standards - wireless industry agrees on open standard to boost worldwide market introduction. Grid computing hooks up to open standards - grid computing architecture based on open standards. |
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