summary of Re: Beyond 'open standard'

[Patrick Ohnewein]

Am Mittwoch, den 19.07.2006, 19:41 +0200 schrieb Georg C. F. Greve:
> I see more problems with fair than with free, to be honest.
> 

I concord with this.

Here a vision about a sort of categorizing the standards into 3 levels:

1) Free Standard

Fully documented with at least one Free Software reference
implementation.

2) Open Standard

Fully documented.

3) Proprietary Standards

Not fully documented and/or covered by patents or other freedom
restrictions.


Today everybody is talking about "Open Standard", IBM, Microsoft, etc.
This results in an awareness about Open Standards in decision makers of
the PA and the economy.

It will be difficult to propagate the term of "Free Standard" against
the PR departments of IBM and Co. pushing the term of "Open Standard".

Even being it difficult it is worst trying, but maybe it would be wiser
to try to create an official and widely accepted definition of "Open
Standard", which matches our views of "Free Standard". This would mean,
that PR departments of IBM and Co. will work for the propagation of
"Free Standard".

Maybe it could be done creating a definition together with the ODF
Alliance, OASIS and other well known entities.

I don't know if this is possible, I just hope their is a chance. Can
someone with more insight give a comment?

Happy hacking!
Patrick