Another slide for discussion from my talk at the University of Texas School of Law:
Open standards vs. open source
- Many people who have not done software development are confused between “open standards” and “open source”: they don’t know what code looks like and what you do with it.
- A standard is like a blueprint: it tells you what you must do if you actually get around to building something.
- An open standard is one that is developed and maintained in a particularly transparent way with community involvement, and is “freely” available and implementable.
- Open source is code, actual concrete software, and it may implement open standards.
- Open source is built and maintained in a particularly transparent way with community involvement, and is “freely” available.
Good post.
I think you could also say that an open standard is a method of handling data in a way agreed upon by groups for the betterment of the groups; it’s convergent. This convergence is it’s asset.
Open Source, while it can be used convergently, is also divergent in that it can be forked for the benefit of more groups.
I think the most confusing issue for people is the difference between open content and open source…. maybe you covered that already.