On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 10:02 +0200, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
- if yes, what would that term be?
well, thanks everybody for the comments.
Alex Hudson suggested:
Probably "royalty free standard"
It is a fine term, but probably it carries some confusion: what is royalty free? The patent license? or the access to the specification? I think it is acceptable to pay for the specifications of a standard, provided that implementing the standard and distributing software in source form is allowed. So probably royalty free is not the best solution.
Ben Finney suggested:
"open, freely-implementable standard"
not bad, but long (and even longer in Italian: implementabile liberamente)
Sean Daly suggested:
"open unencumbered standard"
and Sam Liddicott added an 'and' to it. That is a fine term, too. But like non-discriminatory it carries a negation in front. In any case I couldn't find a simple translation in Italian and gave up on this too.
Giacomo Poderi suggested:
to take some distances from the 'open'/'free' terminology and use a new term, like: fair standard
and I stop here. I like this: fair is a good term. Like in "fair trade" or "fair play" it carries a positive meaning, non discrimination is included. IMHO we have a clear winner here. What do you think?
cheers stef