Openstandardinspired

Openstandardinspired is a term used to describe initiatives, products, or communities that adopt the ethos and methods of open standardization without seeking formal standard status. Such efforts base their interfaces, data models, and governance on openness, broad participation, and a goal of interoperability across different systems and vendors.

Core principles commonly associated with openstandardinspired work include transparency of specifications and processes, public participation in decision making, open licensing of artifacts, versioned interfaces, and a preference for backward compatibility where feasible. The approach often emphasizes reuse of widely recognized formats and protocols as anchors for interoperability, while allowing flexibility in implementation details.

Practices typical of openstandardinspired projects include publishing technical specifications in machine-readable form, maintaining public issue trackers and governance documents, inviting community reviews, and providing conformance criteria or test suites to encourage interoperable implementations. While these projects strive for the openness and collaboration characteristic of formal standards, they generally do not undergo formal standardization through established standards bodies.

Relation to formal standards: openstandardinspired efforts frequently reference or align with formal open standards to gain legitimacy and interoperability, yet they maintain governance and licensing structures that suit their specific goals and timelines. This can foster broad participation while avoiding some procedural constraints of formal standardization.

Benefits and challenges: the approach can improve interoperability, vendor neutrality, and ecosystem longevity, but may risk fragmentation if governance is weak or if multiple, incompatible openstandardinspired efforts emerge. Related concepts include open standards, interoperability, and open-source software.