An emerging understanding of Open Standards from FSFE

" [...] five criteria that have emerged from dialog between stakeholders, and constitute a concise and balanced definition of what an Open Standard should be. Such a standard is

1. subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;
2. without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;
3. free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;
4. managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;
5. available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

[...]"

Read the whole story from Georg Greve's blog.