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CIO Corner

Boundaryless Information Flow is Real and Relevant

Boundaryless Information Flow to Manage Our Safety

EA, Business Agility, and Boundaryless Information Flow

Enterprise Architecture: Return on Investment

Deciding on Open Source

Managing the Flow

Certification - A Part of a Virtuous Circle

Directories - If There Were No Directories I Couldn't Find IT

Boundaryless Information Flow & Enterprise Architecture

Thinking Strategically about Certified Products

Architecture: Make IT Work for You

Open Source and Standards

Architecture: An Essential Tool for the CIO

What Keeps CIO Awake

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Open Source and Standards

The Open Source movement is having an impact on all aspects of the IT industry, including standards organizations. In this article, I’ll give a brief description of the relationship between Open Source and standards.

The British Standards Institute (BSI) offers a clear definition of a standard: “A published specification that establishes a common language, and contains a technical specification or other precise criteria and is designed to be used consistently, as a rule, a guideline, or a definition.”

In the context of The Open Group, we see a standard as a model that should be followed in order to achieve a goal that will benefit multiple organizations. Our view fits with that of BSI’s, which also says that a standard “promotes both efficiency and reliability. In many scenarios it can bring major competitive edge and advantage to businesses.”

We also agree with the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) characterization of the value of standards to customers: “(Standards) contribute to making life simpler, and to increasing the reliability and effectiveness of the goods and services we use.”

Standards fall into four basic categories:

• Dejure – standards approved by a formal standards organization, such as ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC); this term is often use to describe standards adopted by a government and to which conformance is required
• Open –standards developed through a consensus process and made available for use in products of any vendor.
• Defacto – standards adopted as a result of widely accepted practice or common use.
• Proprietary – standards controlled by a specific vendor and not made available for implementation in any other vendor’s products.

The categories above are related, and standards can move from one to another.

We must emphasize that the goodness of the standard is measured in terms of its usefulness, market adoption, and by the degree of control that is retained or relinquished.

Open Source refers to software that can be read, redistributed, used and/or modified, and where those modifications must, in turn, be Open to all. In the Open Source world any programmer can improve, adapt, and fix software. Open Source does not mean free of charge; it is really about the freedom the process brings to users to improve, adapt and fix software at the pace they need rather than relying on a vendor.

So what happens when you put these concepts together – Open Source and standards. Well, Open Source is simply a way that one develops and releases a software product. An Open Source software project could have started from a specification or a standard, or an Open Source project could have started from an implementation.

If there are goals that surround the Open Source project that deal with re-use and interoperability, then it is likely that standards are needed for the Open Source implementation to have lasting value. If an Open Source implementation of a directory service doesn’t support standard directory service requests, its usefulness is limited.

Lasting Open Source implementations will have standards associated with them, regardless of whether the standard was developed first, or derived by the implementation. If standards are important, buyers should demand certification of conformance to those standards and interoperability of the products that support the standard.

In short, Open Source is a process to deliver software, and standards are a model for software behavior.

• Open Source does not replace the need for standards
• Open Source does not make software free
• Open Source and standards are complementary
• Standards do not conflict with Open Source

There is great potential value-add to the industry when Open Source and standards come together, each playing its specific role. Keep this in mind when you establish your strategies around software.
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