Tag Archives: open standards

Web 2.0, Standards and Openness

R. John Robertson has a new post on web 2.0, standards and openness. From the post:

In part driven by community-based standards development, there is a trend in the development of standards and specifications to work in ways that are more lightweight and to develop standards more efficiently. This may simplify the development of educational standards but educational specific standards increasingly need to demonstrate the value that they add over standards that are more generic.

Note: This post is part of a series on education-specific technical standards. These posts appear to provide an excellent overview of the topic.

Open Infrastructure

Joel West has a new post “contrasting open standards, open source, and open innovation.” From the post:

Thus to pay the bills, there has to be value capture somewhere: everything has some level of openness and some level of proprietary–ness1.

Open, Royalty-Free Standards

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has written a new article on the need for open, royalty-free standards. From the post:

The URI is the key to universality…The URI allows you to follow any link, regardless of the content it leads to or who publishes that content. Links turn the Web’s content into something of greater value: an interconnected information space.

Commentary and link by Glyn Moody.

The Need for Open Standards

Cheryl McKinnon has a new post arguing that open standards are needed to prevent the Internet from descending into a “dark ages.” From the post:

But open standards must have the safety net of open source to really succeed in the long term as viable digital preservation alternatives. Access to the underlying code to rebuild, recompile, or refresh the tools to store, view, consume, and retrieve the preserved content is essential to letting digital content be used and appreciated by future generations.

Explaining Open Standards

Jason Hibbets has a new post explaining open standards. From the post:

Proprietary organizations would have you think that the free format is the risk here. But it’s not.