What is the Open in an Open Standard or Specification?

Open is the buzzword of the moment. It was interesting to talk about “Open standards” at ApacheCon ’08. I sat down with Whurley, David Recordon and the W3C‘s Ted Guild to discuss what we could do to improve a number of issues.

One of the things that really struck me is like most conversations about “Open” it means different things to different people. In the context of various standards bodies they use the term to mean drastically different things. In order to reset expectations I’d like to see a common set of terms we use to talk about this stuff. Interestingly David said that’s why the Open Web Foundation (OWF) choose to create “Specifications” rather than “Standards”. By avoiding the existing term they escape the implications that their specifications are mandatory or industrially definitive.

Looking at the way standards/specification organisations use the word “Open” I see 4 key behaviours:

• Open Working Groups
• Open Consultations
• Open Availability
• Free (as in beer)

Open Working Groups

Open Working Groups are those that are available to anyone who wants to participate. The exact barriers to entry vary across different standards organisations. A group like WHATWG sets absolutely no barrier to entry. W3C only allow member organisations to contribute to their specifications. However, membership is open as long as you make a financial contribution (related to the size of your organisation) and agree to the member charter. These terms include release of intellectual property rights and some other clauses. The W3C also allow invited experts from non-member organisations to contribute (without paying a fee). Such people are normally industry experts who are invited to share their subject knowledge.

Some groups also publish public minutes of their meetings with attendance, topics, conclusions and other details about the inner working of their standard/specifications organisation.

These approaches can be contrasted with a group like the British Standards Institute which selects a group of people designated as subject experts to write a standard. The membership of such a group is not expected to change throughout the process of writing a standard. They also do not share their internal working outside BSI until they publish a standard.

This, of course, means we know what open isn’t in this context, but we still haven’t defined exactly what open is; Or at least given the grades of open participation specific names.

Open Consultations

While working groups vary in their openness, many of them also do open consultations. By this I mean they publish draft of their standard and invite commentary. The W3C is notorious for this as they publish many stages of draft, from regular “Working Drafts” to “Candidate Recommendations”, the stage before final publication. By soliciting participation in this way organisations are allowing open input on their work periodically rather than constantly as in the case of open working group participation.

This approach can reduce the amount of time taken to create a standard/specification by allowing a core team to develop a model to be critiqued by the larger community rather than trying to find rolling consensus on all issues.

Open Availability

The ability to gain access to a standard is not guaranteed. Some standards are restricted to organisations in certain industries, such as telecoms or with membership to certain industry groups. Open standards are freely available to read or implement.

Free

Some standards are open but cost money, such as many of those published by the BSI. The money used from selling the standard pays for the cost of developing it. The majority of Internet and Web specifications and standards are free, the cost being borne by the corporations which sponsor the development for their own use.

Terms to describe standards and specifications

There is also an interesting distinction between standards and specifications. This was something David was keen to point out on behalf of the Open Web Foundation. The OWF builds specifications not standards, this is because they are focused on rapid problem solving. By creating a consensus around a technical issue, a specification if you will, they enable standards bodies to take that existing work and use it as the basis for standardisation amongst their members. I think this is the key distinction between a standard and a specification.

Member organisations contribute to standards bodies in order to help shape the direction of standards they know they actively want to use. This means that standards bodies often have large amounts of people engaged in the work on a standard. This can make the process unwieldy and highly politic. Groups like the OWF on the other hand write specifications, usually with a small group of highly motivated people at the core of each specification. Since the goal is technical consensus there is less politics and a sensible specification can often be reached quickly.

While the only difference between a specification document and a standard document is wording, the difference in process can be huge.

Pulling it all together

By outlining the different usage of Open I hope I have given everyone an idea of the concepts. As such I now want to tie those concepts back into a set of terms people can use to understand Open in the context of standards and specifications.

Working Groups

Open Working Group

A working group to which anyone can participate regardless of company affiliation or other status. The meeting records (such as they are) are Open and freely available.

Members Working Group

A working group which is limited to members organisations of the standards/specification body. Meeting records may be Openly available or restricted to the Member organisations.

Private Working Group

The working group is invitation only and minutes and other records are restricted to member organisations or the working group.

Membership

Open Membership

Anyone/organisation can join the specification/standards body to contribute. Agreement to a common membership agreement may be required (to release IP for example, or set a code of conduct).

Nominal Fee Membership

Membership is open to any organisation/individual but a nominal fee may be required in addition to a membership agreement.

Closed Membership

Membership is limited to an invitation list of participants. This may be a limit to members of a particular industry (such as telecoms) or it may be private consortium of companies.

Participation with the community

Open Consultations

The working group will periodically release a version of its standard/specification for public review and comment. Each comment received will be publicly addressed

Member Consultation

The working group will periodically release a version of its standard/specification for review and comment by members of the standards/specification body. Each comment received will be addressed to the members

Private Consultation

Specific experts will periodically be asked to review and comment on a version of the standard/specification and their comments will be reviewed by the working group

Availability

Openly Availability

The final version of the specification/standard is freely available at no cost

Nominal Fee Availability

The final version of the specification/standard is freely available at a nominal cost (the value of nominal may vary from industry to industry)

Member Availability

Available to members of a specification/standards body. There may be a charge.

Examples

Open Web Foundation

The Open Web Foundation have been a buzz in the blogosphere recently so they can be our first example. The OWF:

• Publish Specifications
• Use Open Working Groups
• Use Open Consultation
• Provide Open Availability

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C are one of the leading providers of Web Standards, such as HTML, XML and CSS. They have been criticised in some quarters for taking to long to publish new and updated versions of standards. Their profile is different to that of the OWF. The W3C:

• Publish Standards
• Use Member Working Groups
• Use Open Consultation
• Provide Open Availability

British Standards Institute

The BSI produces a lot of industrial standards such as the “kite mark” which governs the safety of children’s toys and other items in Britain. They have also produced a number of technology standards such as PAS78 which helps organisations purchase accessible Web sites. They mostly have a very different model to the OWF and the W3C. My understanding is that BSI:

• Publish Standards
• Use Member Working Groups
• Use Member Consultation
• Provide Nominal Fee Availability

Conclusions

I think that this terminology makes it clearer and easier to describe a number of existing standards bodies. By using the same terminology people and organisation can have better expectations of the various standards/specification organisations.