The Value of Open Standards

Should you care where your standards come from?

Whether using standards that are "open" can save money is an important question, but not as important as knowing whether they will be effective in protecting fundamental rights.

In 2011 the Dutch Court of Audit released a report on the benefits of using open standards and open source software for government IT, concluding that there were hardly any benefits to be gained. The Court's underlying research was widely criticized. In this article, the authors analyze the report's omissions and weaknesses, introduce an economic framework for evaluating standardization, apply that ...

It took Judge Robart 207 pages to decide what a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" price would be for the use of Motorola's "Standards Essential Patents." A standards setting organization could have done so in a few sentences.

The U.S. patent system has been taking heavy fire for years from critics who contend that it is "irretrievably broken." This year, those critics gained a new supporter: President Obama — at least when it comes to patents wielded by "non-practicing entities."

Ten years from now, most of the data, hardware and software in any nation will be housed in a few hundred enormous data farms, heavily defended against cyberattack — and completely vulnerable to kinetic weapons. Remember something called "war?"