In 2008, I first wrote about Reinhard's idea to remember the criteria of an Open Standard with the help of an mnemonic. When we used the the German mnemonic in our latest German PR about market standards, Kai Eckert picked it up. After I contacted him, I send that for proofreading to our English editor team and now we have can use it for press releases on Open Standards as well:

  • applicable (without restrictions): free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model,
  • existing (implementations): available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.
  • independent (of a single vendor): managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties
  • open (specification): subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties
  • untainted (with dependencies to closed standards): without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves

Hope it will also help you to remember what makes an Open Standard. Thanks to Reinhard, Kai, and the editor team!