Running Code as Part of an Open Standards Policy

Rajiv Shah, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Jay Kesan, Professor & Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois

6/17/2009
(Original Publish Date: 6/1/2009)

Governments around the world are considering implementing or even mandating open standards policies. They believe these policies will provide economic, sociol political, and technical benefits. In this article, we analyze the failure of the Massachusetts's open standards policy as applied to document formats. We argue it failed due to the lack of running code. Running code refers to multiple independent, interoperable implementations of an open standard. With running code, users have choice in their adoption of a software product and consequently economic and technological benefits. We urge governments to incorporate a "running code" requirement when adopting an open standards policy.