Talk:Legitimacy of standards

See what discussion?! I was surprised by the use of the word 'legitimate' in this article, but would nevertheless consider that the content is good and NPOV (though only one half ofthe story) and should stand. --Lindosland 21:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The term seems rather POV to me. I've never seen it used before. Some of the content of the article appears to just be copied from the open standards page.  I don't see a justification for having separate pages.  If this term is really frequently used (which I doubt), its page should perhaps just be a redirect to open standards. &mdash;Pangolin 05:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The word "Legitimacy" clearly is a problem -- it is not a neutral term. There are other problems.  For example, "design by committee" is also pejorative, and it is applied to OSI but not to TCP/IP, even though both are the products of standards bodies (ISO and IETF, respectively) that operate in a fashion you could call "by committee".  The operation procedures are not identical but they certainly are similar.  Nor is the cost of standards documents a meaningful consideration, at least not when the cost is modest (on the order of the price of a textbook -- as opposed to many thousands of US dollars as is sometimes the case).  Ethernet is a "pay for" standard, but that hasn't kept it from being successful.  TCP/IP won over OSI because of market success, not the price of a bit of paper. Paul Koning 15:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe there are a number of problems. Should this article be deleted, or should it be repaired? If repaired, how? Paul Koning 21:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) The title is not neutral
 * 2) The content is not neutral
 * 3) There are multiple errors of fact in the content
 * 4) No sources are given for any of the content

RFCs don't necessarily fit the claimed definition
The first two sentences of the article say
 * "Legitimate standards are, to some critics, only those standards whose documentation can be downloaded free-of-charge, and which can be implemented without royalties or other restrictions." and
 * "Internet Request for Comments (RFCs) are an example of such open standards."

But that's just factually wrong, isn't it? IETF RFCs can be downloaded free of charge, but they are not necessarily royalty-free. I believe IETF policy allows RFCs with royalty requirements. &mdash;Pangolin 05:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right. See RFC 2026.  The IETF has a process that attempts to identify relevant patents, and if any are brought to light it asks for assurances of licensing on "reasonable and non-discriminator terms", but such assurance is not required. The same general approach is used by many other standards organizations. Paul Koning 15:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

DECnet is open
By the definition given here, DECnet is open. It is a common misperception that DECnet is closed. By every one of the metrics given, with one possible exception, it is open. The one possible exception is that DECnet specification development was done only by Digital. But specs are free for the download, and freely implementable. Indeed, there are open source implementations -- Linux has one, for example.

&mdash;Paul Koning 17:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Legitimate standards
Legitimate standards sounds like a new term with original research for what is known as Open standards. Please merge. Arebenti 22:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge to Open standard
This is a variant concept of Open standard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.52.194.78 (talk) 02:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Paul Koning (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge The current article is a pure POV essay. Let's merge it with Open Standard and make it encyclopedic. --Macrakis (talk) 05:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)