simple print format

are you a ...?

• newcomer
• academic end-user
• software developer
• IT manager or technical staff
• strategic IT decision-maker

publications

• strategy and policy
• open standards
• open source software development
• intellectual property rights (IPR), licensing and patents
• building communities
• examples of open source software
• case studies

Disparate computer systems and networks cannot be made to talk to one another, or interoperate, if they do not speak the same language. Standards are like the shared rules of a language. Open standards bring together all interested parties to contribute to their creation and maintenance. They are published through a standards body such as IEEE, ISO, W3C or OASIS. These resources explore issues around standards, standards bodies, and the implementation of standards in software.

Further external resources:

• CETIS open standards and interoperability service [http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/]
• JISC standards catalogue [http://standards.jisc.ac.uk/catalogue/Home.phtml]
• Wikipedia page for "Open standards" surveying a number of differing definitions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standards]
• Patents and Open Standards overview by Cover Pages [http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html]
• Open Grid Forum - developing standards for grid software [http://www.ogf.org/]
• Open Web Foundation - fledgling community for standards relating to the web [http://openwebfoundation.org/]

Standards organisations include:

• IEEE [http://standards.ieee.org/sa/index.html]
• ISO [http://www.iso.org/]
• W3C [http://www.w3.org/]
• OASIS [http://www.oasis-open.org/]
• IETF [http://www.ietf.org/]