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Many standards are proprietary rather than being open, and must be licensed from the organization that owns the standard.

1 Examples of open standards

Hardware:

• ISA
• PCI
• AGP

Software:

• HTML
• SQL
• IP
• TCP

2 Patents

In 2002 and 2003 there was some controversy about using Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing for the use of patented technology in web standards. Bruce PerensBruce Perens is a prominent figure in the open source movement, with a long and distinguished record. He is a former Debian GNU/Linux Project Leader, the primary author of the Open Source Definition, a founder of Software in the Public Interest, founder o and others have argued that the use of patentA patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally 20 years from the filing date). The term "patent" originates from the term patere which means to lay open (to public inspectios restricts who can implement a standard to those able or willing to pay for the use of the patented technology. The requirementIn software engineering, a requirement is a description of what a system should do. Very few systems have a single requirement (!), and most have hundreds. A collection of requirements then define the characteristics of the desired (required) system, but to pay some small amount per user, is often an insurmountable problem for free softwareThis article refers to free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation. For software available free of charge, see Freeware. The term free software refers to software which, once obtained, can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed. or open sourceNote: "open source" in the intelligence community simply means "any information accessible to the public, possibly after paying a fee". This article is about open source software, a more common meaning for the term "open source". Open source or open sourc implementations which can be redistributed by anyone. Royalty free (RF) licensing is preferred by Open Source adepts. The GNU GPL license includes a section that enjoins any one who distributes a program released under the GPL from enforcing patents on subsequent users of the software or derivative works.

3 Quotes

• EU Commissioner Erkki Liikanen : "Open standards are important to help create interoperable and affordable solutions for everybody. They also promote competition by setting up a technical playing field that is level to all market players. This means lower costs for enterprises and, ultimately, the consumer." ( World Standards Day , 14 October, 2003) [1]