In this blog entry, I’ll review the seven-year long process under which the “European Interoperability Framework” (EIF) first set a global high water mark for liberalizing the definition of open standards, and then retreated from that position.

If one were to choose the single most disputed question in standard setting over the past decade, it would have to be the deceivingly simple question, “What does it mean to be an ‘open standard?’”