Software standards must be implementable in any software or business model, including those based on Free Software. When patents are included in software standards, they need to be licensed in a manner that doesn’t restrict their implementation in any way. Besides the absence of any other restriction, that means royalty-free licensing to any party implementing the standard.

"I’ve just taken a first look at IBM’s promise not to assert its patents involved in implementing 150 software standards and it appears to be a work of art in its simplicity."

"Much of the communication on the Internet happens between computers according to standards that define common languages.

IBM has just announced a new corporate policy regarding its "behavior when helping to create open technical standards".

Today with the first public release of ACTA, the effects the international agreement will have on Free Software appear to be dangerous for its development and its distribution. First, by extending infringements proceedings and criminal offences to a broad scope of “intellectual property” including software patents.

The Free Software Foundation Europe is calling on European Free Software businesses to participate in a survey of business attitudes towards the acceptability of including patents in industry standards.

This survey is a key component of a study that will play the major role in the EC's reform of standardisation policy. It is open until September 17.

the Dutch government has recently attracted Microsoft's anger by launching an actionplan to adopt open standards, and concretely OpenDocument Format by April 2008 in the national government. Open Standards will become mandatory and Free Software will be preferred. As the Minister of State, Frank Heemskerk, argued, this plan is not to exclude any company, but to stimulate information exchange, vendor independence and choice for various software products that implement open standards. he Ministry of Economical Affairs has published an English version of the plan on its site today.

One of the enduring soap operas this year has involved the ongoing patent infringement threats by Microsoft against “Linux, OpenOffice, email, and other open source software.” According to Microsoft, 235 of its (unnamed) patents are being infringed, and it should be entitled to be paid for this use of its intellectual property.

Latest news on standards and Linux being harmed by intellectual monopolies