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UK: Open Standards Must Be Restriction Free
Glyn Moody writes "There has been a big battle in the UK over whether open standards should be Restriction/Royalty-Free (RF) or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND). That matters, because open source can't in general implement FRAND standards (there are legal hacks that can be applied in a few special circumstances.) First it seemed that RF had the upper hand [.pdf], but later comments from officials cast doubt on that. Now we have the definitive answer from the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude: 'The Government require that their ICT should be built on open standards, wherever possible, to improve competition and avoid lock-in to a particular technology or supplier. Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) specifications may present some difficulties for the open source software development model in terms of patents and royalties. To deliver a level playing field for both open source and proprietary software, open standards are needed.' Will UK government use of open source finally take off, or is this a hollow victory?"
No, you are not. You could even compile your own list of country codes (from wikipedia, e.g.), and publish it. What you cannot do is to buy a copy of an ISO standard, and print out 10 copies for your friends.
But yes, I too wish it wasn't so. That would in practice mean that the price of being a member of ISO for a country would have to rise significantly, with the obvious consequences.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Fair - We control the standard however we cannot restrict you too much on how you decide to use it.
Reasonable - The pricing should not be enough to put you in the poor house however you may pay something to compensate for our work
And - (we need a vowel in our acronym, so it sounds like a word)
Non-Discriminatory - We cannot make sure that particular groups get advantages while others don't.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.