• NOTE: This is a draft document. If you’d like to get more involved in the development of this definition we recommend you join the open definition discuss list.

The Definition

Open format are:

• Open standards to store and transmit documents, information, and in general knowledge.

An open standard is one which is:

• Publicly and freely available
• Freely implementable without encumbrance of patent (or other restriction) and without a requirement for royalty

Notes and Thoughts

An open format is not:

• Encumbered by patents.
• Named using a trademark unless that trademark is usably by anyone under appropriately open terms (to define? – a trademark can be used to protect the integrity of a format, but use should not require payment, even for conformance testing)
• tied to a particular software implementation (ie. it should be practical to have multiple software implementations)

An open format is:

• Well and completely documented sufficient to implement a safely conformant reader/writer from scratch.
• Defined in documentation that is freely redistributable (though the document may be under a license that doesn’t allow changes to the spec document)
• Software language independent (no dependencies on language specific components like “python pickling”)

Is is desirable that an open format:

• have an open source reference implementation for reading and writing.

Background

Existing material:

• http://okfn.org/iai/
• http://www.openforumeurope.org/what-is/open-standards/open-standards/
• http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_file_format

Open formats are open standards to store and transmit documents, information, and in general knowledge. Examples of open formats are HTML and XML. It may be sufficient to discuss just “standards” in general, as standard formats are just a particular form of standard. However, since formats play a very important role, it is worthwhile to consider them explicitly in the rest of the discussion. [source: http://www.davidecerri.org/en/doc/openness.pdf]