An open file format is a
file format
A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
for storing
digital data
Digital data, in information theory and information systems, is information represented as a string of discrete symbols each of which can take on one of only a finite number of values from some alphabet, such as letters or digits. An example is ...
,
[ defined by an openly published ]specification
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
There are different types of technical or engineering specificat ...
usually maintained by a standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...
, and which can be used and implemented by anyone. Open file format is licensed with open license
A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are ...
. For example, an open format can be implemented by both proprietary and free and open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...
, using the typical software license
A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both sour ...
s used by each. In contrast to open file formats, closed file formats are considered trade secrets. However, the actual image used by an open file format may still be copyrighted or trademarked.
Depending on the definition, the specification of an open format may require a fee to access or, very rarely, contain other restrictions. The range of meanings is similar to that of the term open standard
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...
.
Specific definitions
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...
defined the criteria for open formats as follows:[Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0](_blank)
– OASIS Standard, 1 May 2005
* The format is based on an underlying open standard
* The format is developed through a publicly visible, community driven process
* The format is affirmed and maintained by a vendor-independent standards organization
* The format is fully documented and publicly available
* The format does not contain proprietary extensions
UK government
In 2012 the UK Government created the policy Open Standards Principles, stating that the Open Standards Principles apply to every aspect of government IT and that Government technology must remain open to everyone.[ Text was copied from this source, which is available under a]
Open Government Licence v3.0
© Crown copyright. They have seven principles for selecting open standards for use in government, following these principals many open formats were adopted, notably Open Document Format (ODF). The seven principles for selecting open standards for use in the UK government are:
* Open standards must meet user needs
* Open standards must give suppliers equal access to government contracts
* Open standards must support flexibility and change
* Open standards must support sustainable cost
* Select open standards using well-informed decisions
* Select open standards using fair and transparent processes
* Specify and implement open standards using fair and transparent processes[
]
US government
Within the framework of Open Government Initiative, the federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...
adopted the Open Government Directive
The Open Government Initiative is an effort by the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama to " reatean unprecedented level of openness in Government.". The directive starting this initiative was issued on January 20, 2009, ...
, according to which: "An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information".
State of Minnesota
The State of Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to i ...
defines the criteria for open, XML-based file formats as follows:
* The format is interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications
* The format is fully published and available royalty-free
* The format is implemented by multiple vendors
* The format is controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The "defines open formats as specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community, affirmed and maintained by a standards body and are fully documented and publicly available."Major Revision of Massachusetts Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM).
Robin Cover, Editor – Created: 3 July 2007. – Cover Pages
The Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) classifies four formats as "Open Formats":
# OASIS Open Document Format For Office Applications (OpenDocument) v. 1.1
# Ecma-376 Office Open XML Formats (Open XML)
# Hypertext Document Format v. 4.01
# Plain Text Format
The Linux Information Project
According to The Linux Information Project
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...
, the term ''open format'' should refer to "any format that is published for anyone to read and study but which may or may not be encumbered by patents, copyrights or other restrictions on use"[ – as opposed to a ''free format'' which is ''not'' encumbered by any copyrights, patents, trademarks or other restrictions.
]
Examples of open formats
Open formats (in the royalty-free and free access sense) include:[
* PNG — a ]raster image
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
format standardized by ISO
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Is ...
/ IEC
* FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
— lossless audio
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...
codec
A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder.
In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...
* WebM
WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponso ...
— a video/audio container format
* HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
— is the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
* gzip
gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and ...
— for compression
* CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone t ...
— style sheet format usually used with (X)HTML, standardized by W3C
The following formats are open (royalty-free with a one-time fee on the standard):
* PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
: old versions are free in both senses, but since PDF 1.8 the standards require a fee;
* Office Open XML
Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial versi ...
: the ECMA version is free to access, but the newer ISO versions require a fee;
* OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed ...
: As adopted by the UK Government in 2012 to meet their open standards principles, for Government technology to remain open to everyone.
* C language
C (''pronounced like the letter c'') is a general-purpose computer programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie, and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities o ...
: royalty-free, but ISO standard requires a fee (drafts available for free);
See also
* Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...
* Open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
* Openness
Openness is an overarching concept or philosophy that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency and collaboration. That is, openness refers to "accessibility of knowledge, technology and other resources; the transparency of action; the pe ...
* Embrace, extend, and extinguish
* List of open-source codecs
This is a listing of open-source codecs—that is, open-source software implementations of audio or video coding formats. Many of the codecs listed implement media formats that are restricted by patents and are hence not open formats. For example ...
* Open educational resources
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and ...
* Open system
* Open content
* Network effect
In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Netw ...
* Proprietary file format
A proprietary file format is a file format of a company, organization, or individual that contains data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding-scheme, designed by the company or organization to be secret, such that the decodi ...
* Vendor lock-in
In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.
The use of open standards and alternativ ...
References
External links
OpenFormats
Practical Advice for using Free Formats from Ubuntu Community Documentation
Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU, 2006
EU report in favor of adopting open source software
Definition of Free Cultural Works
{{DEFAULTSORT:Open Format
Computer file formats