Internet Standards Groups Unite Behind Open Processes

alphadogg writes in with an excerpt from Network World:"Five leading Internet standards bodies have joined together to articulate a set of guidelines for the creation of open standards that they say will foster continued innovation, competition and interoperability in the Internet industry. The IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the IETF, the Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium hammered out the language for their five basic principles for standards development over the course of the last few months. Dubbed 'OpenStand,' these lofty principles are envisioned as a modern paradigm for global, open standards development processes. The OpenStand principles are in sharp contrast to the more formal, government-driven efforts of rival standards bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union, which is an arm of the United Nations, and the International Organization for Standardization, a group of national standards bodies." Although the principles generally seem reasonable, they made no stand against patents in standards: "Standards specifications are made accessible to all for implementation and deployment. Affirming standards organizations have defined procedures to develop specifications that can be implemented under fair terms. Given market diversity, fair terms may vary from royalty-free to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND)."

Comments

Re:open?

[gbjbaanb]

the trouble is, you can make a standard for something like gsm phones, and have to pay motorola a cent or two for each device sold, in order to recompense them for the millions of dollars they spent innovating something essential to such devices. Then someone else comes along and says "you can't have it rectangular" and you have to give them billions.

This is why the patent encumbrance is a bad thing for open standards. I would be happy to have all patents used in such devices considered under the same FRAND terms, that would be ok, so you'd pay 1c per device if you made it rectangular with rounded corners or use a swipe to unlock it etc. Or I'd like to say no patents allowed whatsoever for open standard-based devices, but I'd worry that would only make companies spend their energies making non-standard things instead.

So, yes, patents, but all on the same terms.