This article is co-authored by James Bryce Clark, General Counsel, and Laurent Liscia, Executive Director, of OASIS

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During August, Talkstandards.com hosted an open forum focused towards a number of issues related to the tension between traditional software development business models, FRAND and RAND IPR licensing requirements and the open source community. The event was structured such that two featured articles were posted by Talkstandards regular Stacy Baird (Managing Director of Citrus Co.) and James Bryce Clark (from OASIS). In response to these featured articles, a series of expert contributors were invited to post introductory remarks, upon which the event discussion took place. These articles are summarized below. Please follow the links to access the articles in full.

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As you know, open standards work and open source code development have some similarities. Both systems are designed to permit strangers to collaborate in joint design. Both have rules for discovering and filtering private patent or copyright claims, with the goal that end-users can access and use the outputs safely. While they’re two distinct systems, usually they are complementary, not in opposition.
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This article is co-authored by Laurent Liscia, Executive Director, James Bryce Clark, General Counsel, and Dr Carol Cosgrove-Sacks, Senior Advisor on International Standards Policy at the OASIS Secretariat

How should European standardization policy be reformed to enhance efficiency? Should transparency be a key priority or could alternative measures more effectively improve the current European standardization system?

OASIS, one of the largest and oldest open standards consortia in the Internet and e-commerce field, participates actively in global and European standards coordination efforts. OASIS standards projects have long been initiated and implemented by a variety of European regional and national governments and enterprises.

We have been active in the recent EC projects to re-examine standards policy, and are keen to contribute to this conversation. Our views generally on how EU standardization policy ought to evolve have been circulated widely, and shared with the official policy bodies giving careful consideration to these issues in 2009-2010, especially in response to the ICT standards process – THE WAY FORWARD and participation in the high level EXPRESS process.

In summary, OASIS advocates that government policies and practices should more clearly address the fait accompli of pervasive use of consortia standards at every level of European public and private sector enterprise; and provide tools to welcome and leverage these cooperative industry innovations. Where EU Directives are thought to be ambiguous about “ESO” standards versus industry standards, they should be clarified to address and manage the obvious widespread adoption of both, and the continuing desire of industry participants to use them. De jure organizations should promote interorganizational cooperation, and be careful not to style themselves as competition to marketplace efforts.

Transparency can be an important tool in improving open standards, and promoting cooperation among standards sources, though it is not the exclusive approach to be applied.

Transparency may refer to several facets of the operation of standardization projects:

- One is visibility into the products. End-user implementers, as well as regulators, are better able to assess the evenhandedness and influences on a specification when the draft work and debates that produce it can be accessed openly. Restricted access impairs that ability to evaluate a standard’s quality and any biases. Impaired visibility also is an obstacle to work on interoperability that may come from cooperation or independent reviews.

- One is availability of licensure or legal rights. The obligations of participants and others to make legal rights available, for use of a standard, must be clear. Also, increasingly, as policymakers promote free and open source software, and open government data, some uses and implementations are prevented if standards are not clearly available free of royalty payment requirements, or in some cases, burdened by overly complex or burdensome license conditions.

- One is simple availability, in the sense of access. Standards not readily locatable via the Internet, or standards whose contents cannot be redistributed, or require payment to access, may be less likely to be widely adopted and leveraged by users. We note that there are fundamental unresolved issues with the traditional business models for standards creation, resulting, for example, in disparate standards access fees and practices among ISO, ITU and IEC.

- Finally, one is clarity of administration. The rules that affect an open standard’s development and progress, and decisions taken regarding the same, should be readily available to the public. Those with an interest in the trade-regulation and competition-law aspects of standards outcomes presumably also are better served by more disclosure.

OASIS very much appreciates the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the EU institutions. OASIS looks forward to many continued years of productive cooperation with policymakers and other standards-creating entities, in Europe and globally.

The benefits from diversity and the risks of government intervention were at the center of the discussion during TalkStandards’ open forum on the issue of SSO Governance on January 28, 2010.

Oliver Bell (Reforming the Reformist Agenda) highlighted the benefits associated with a range of diversified SSOs.
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This interview with Peter Brown, Chairman of the OASIS Board, was conducted by email for the Talkstandards.com open forum on SSO Governance.

Peter Brown gives a valuable insight into the governance of OASIS and some of the rationale behind it. Also, Peter Brown offers his general view of governance issues such openness, governmental interference and much more.

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Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently announced that they are backing the OASIS Energy Interoperation Technical Committee to enable collaborative and dynamic use of energy. The goal is to develop web service-based information and communication models for exchanging dynamic pricing, reliability and emergency signals building upon open standards (see article).
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The web has become a natural part of our everyday life. In perhaps no other area is the value of standards more evident. The Internet as we know it would not have existed without standards. Such features as global interoperability and connectivity are the result of important standards such as TCP/IP, HTML and XML. The question is if future development will be determined by markets or politics?
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Ten case studies of SSOs for the purpose of better understanding synergies between different types – formal and informal – standard setting organizations and consortia.

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