Standards are generally accepted rules/guides, typically forming the skeleton for an ideal model
Standards can be used on anything, and anywhere; some popular uses include measurements and models/examples.
Standards and Open Data - Open Standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed (e.g. open process). There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage.
The terms "open" and "standard" have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage. There are a number of definitions of open standards which emphasize different aspects of openness, including the openness of the resulting specification, the openness of the drafting process, and the ownership of rights in the standard. The term "standard" is sometimes restricted to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis. [1]
W3C Open Standard Definition:
A set of requirements that a provider of technical specification must follow to qualify for the adjective Open Standard:
Transparency (due process is public, and all technical discussions, meeting minutes, are archived and referencable in decision making)
Relevance (new standardization is started upon due analysis of the market needs, including requirements phase, e.g. accessibility, multi-linguism)
Openness (anybody can participate, and everybody does: industry, individual, public, government bodies, academia, on a worldwide scale)
Impartiality and consensus (guaranteed fairness by the process and the neutral hosting of the W3C organization, with equal weight for each participant)
Availability (free access to the standard text, both during development and at final stage, translations, and clear IPR rules for implementation, allowing open source development in the case of Internet/Web technologies)
Maintenance (ongoing process for testing, errata, revision, permanent access) [2]
Ten Open Standards Rights
01. Open Meeting
02. Consensus
03. Due Process
04. Open IPR
05. One World
06. Open Change
07. Open Documents
08. Open Interface
09. Open Use
10. On-going Support [3]
