More and more governments are requiring software based on open standards. But what is an open standard? Vendors and standards bodies are currently free to promote any definition they wish. Legal costs surrounding use of such standards are rising. Now, the open source community is sparking a broader discussion aimed at a new consensus on the defiinition of the term open standard, Toward that end, the Open Source Initiative is creating the Open Standards Requirement, an attempt to define five key criteria. Learn what these criteria are, and how they will evolve through public discussion following endorsements at the European Open Source Convention in September 2006. Cooper also talks about the history of this initiative, and the importance of always having an open source implementation of any open standard for software.
Danese Cooper is director, secretary and treasurer of the Open Source Initiative. She also works on open source strategy in the developing world for Intel Corp. Her technical career includes engineering jobs at Apple Computer, Microsoft and Symantec. She joined the Open Source Initiative board in December 2001. At Sun Microsystems, Cooper created and managed the Open Source Programs Office at Sun from March 1999 until March 2005. She chose the Sun Public License for NetBeans software, helped draft the CDDL for OpenSolaris, and worked on the creation of the Sun Industry Standards Source License for TI-RPC, the Joint Copyright Assignment for OpenOffice.org and that program's dual-licensing with the LGPL. She received a Chairman's Award at Sun as part of the team creating the Sun blogspaces: blogs.sun.com and java.net.
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