Legitimacy of standards
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Legitimate standards are, to some critics, only those standards whose documentation can be downloaded free-of-charge, and which can be implemented without royalties or other restrictions.
Internet Request for Comments (RFCs) are an example of such open standards. However, many standards organisations attempt to support themselves by restricting standard documentation through copyrights (and selling copies), and restricting implementation through patents (and selling licenses). While this second approach does solve the issue of how to pay for the time (and sometimes travel for meetings, and in some cases on-location research) of those writing the standards, it can cause significant problems.
Standards which cost money to purchase and/or license cause significant problems for:
- developers of free software and open hardware;
- electronics hobbyists;
- manufacturers of small-volume products; and
- those developing new products who lack sufficient access to capital.
An engineer may spend more time just trying to figure out what is involved in implementing and licensing such a standard than it would take to actually implement an open standard. Expensive standards often show evidence of having been designed by a committee. Sometimes, they appear to have gratuitous deviations from existing practice that appear to serve the interests of the standards organization in creating protectable intellectual property, rather than the societal interests. When standards documents are not affordable, it can cause trouble for technicians trying to debug systems, as well as intelligent end users trying to evaluate or understand the technology.
Standards committee members sometimes double-dip by selling books or classes on how to implement a standard; the more arbitrary the standard, the more market for these add-on products. Some formal standards are developed by people who are more office politicians than engineers. Sometimes, licensing of standards is also used to circumvent a user's legal rights to fair use copying by preventing the development of equipment or software that allows such copying.
Sometimes, standards organizations may involve companies with vested interests that all "contribute" patents (subject to licensing), when freely available technology would have done better. Some standards organizations appear to collect millions of dollars a year for a single standard, or a small set of closely related standards, yet appear to do very little in terms of active standards development.
There are some alternative ways of funding standards:
- funding by governments (for example, NIST);
- making money from optional compatibility certification mark licensing, rather than patent licensing;
- developing standards, and making them open to all to create a market;
- developing own standards by end-users.
- instituting cost cutting measures, including using teleconference, rather than expensive travel;
- developing standards by one person, or a few people, and simply offering up for use (such as internet RFCs); where if anyone likes it, they can use it, otherwise, they can come up with a better standard or suggest revisions.
It is worth noting the outcome of the competition between the truly open standards of the TCP/IP protocol stack (the basis of the Internet), the designed-by-committee and pay for copies OSI protocol stack, and the various vendor proprietary WAN standards (Decnet,SNA). TCP/IP dominates.
Less open standards are more competitive when:
- there are no open alternatives;
- they get to the market first;
- extensive marketing is used to prop them up; or
- they have a significant technical advantage.
[edit] Legitimacy/Openness factors
- Is the standard documented?
- Is the standard available for all to use, or is it intended to create a monopoly or vendor lock-in?
- Is the documentation available for immediate download, free of charge?
- Can the standard be implemented without payment of royalties, membership, or license fees?
- Does licensing the standard pose other restrictions (such as copy protection enforcement)?
- Is sufficient information available to implement the standard without purchasing official documents?
- Are there any patents interfering with the implementation of the standard?
- Are trademarks enforced in such a way as to interfere with the use of the standard?
- Does the standard avoid arbitrary deviations from existing standard practice?
- Does the standard use appropriate technology?
- Is the standard supported by multiple companies?
- Are licensing fees stated up front?
- Is uniform licensing available (all companies pay comparable fee per unit)?
- Are licensing fees reasonable for small volumes (1-1000 units)? Is overhead minimal?
- Are licenses free if the product is free?
- How does the openness of the standard compare to competing standards?
- Is the standard extensible?
- Is the standard locked to a particular platform?
[edit] Some examples
Here are some comparisons between different formats..
- WAN: TCP/IP is much more open than the OSI protocol suite, Decnet, SNA, etc.
- LAN: TCP/IP is much more open than NetBEUI, the NetWare protocol stack, etc.
- Video/Audio: "Ogg Vorbis Audio" and "Ogg Theora Video" are much more open than other formats, including those with official standards such as MP3, AAC, MPEG1/2/4, etc. Ogg standards are free. Vorbis is patent-free and Theora's patents are automatically licensed, free of charge. Vorbis also appears to offer better audio quality than MP3 or AAC. For streaming audio, Icecast and Peercast are more open than RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. MPEG2 patents reportedly cost $2.50 per device (no minimums or annual fees), but there are additional royalties for streaming services, media, etc.
- Instant Messaging: Jabber is much more open than AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, etc. However, companies such as AOL have tried to sabotage Jabber by blocking the gateways between Jabber and AIM/ICQ.
- Office Applications: OpenOffice.org file formats are much more open than Microsoft Office file formats. OpenOffice.org files are XML files inside a standard ZIP container. Although Microsoft is making a transition from older incompletely documented binary formats to XML files, the company has used non-standard patented variations on XML to prevent others from reading or writing the format. Also, formats such as Docbook/XML, TEI-Lite, and XHTML are much more open than office applications.
- Flash memory: MMC is more open than Secure Digital Card (though the two are largely interchangeable, if used carefully. SD-card is more open than xD-Picture Card or Sony Memory Stick. CompactFlash, based closely on ATA, is more open than SD-card.
- USB appears to be more open than FireWire. USB standards can be downloaded for free, and there do not appear to be any licensing fees if one does not use the USB-certified logos. FireWire ports are covered by dozens of patents; fortunately, these patents can be licensed for $0.25 per device with no minimum or annual fees.
