Draft General Technique for G4.2 L3 SC3 - Tim Boland - Jan 18 2005

Proceed through each item (technology or feature from G4.2 L3 SC1 on required list for Web resource) in order, and for each item, show documentation (proof-evidence?) that this item derives from an open standard or a public specification; this documentation could take the form of links to appropriate sites referencing the item, or showing satisfaction of commonly-accepted definitions for "open standard" and for "public specifcation". The documentation should be associated with the Web resource, so that a user could access the information.

• What form should the documentation take? A checklist? Prose? A table (see example following)?
• G4.2S L3 SC1 mentions just "technology", but G4.2 L3 SC3 mentions both "technology" and "feature". Is there some distinction implied between "technology" and "feature" for SC3, but not for SC1?
• Is there a "universal" authoritative definition for what constitutes an "open standard" or "public specification"? I could not find one, but found several resources (see Resources following) with pertinent material..
• What is the criteria for verifiable evidence or proof? Is one reference sufficient, or should three or four references (citing indepedent resources) be required, for example?
• How specific should the technology/feature reference be? For example, CSS 2.1 CR instead of just CSS, or HTML 4.01 instead of just HTML?

HTML and CSS are the only features/technologies required for this page to work as intended (so documented). HTML is an open specification, because it is derived from W3C, and "W3C" is mentioned explicitly in Primary Resources 2, 3 and 4 following. Similarly, CSS is an open standard, because it is also derived from W3C, and thus preceding applies to CSS as well as to HTML. So a table may be created, as:

Technology/Feature	Evidence for Open Standard/Public Specification
HTML4.01 Rec	Referenced implicitly via W3C in Primary Resources 2, 3 and 4 (in "Resources" following-provide links?)
CSS2.1 CR (CSS 1 Rec?)	Referenced implicitly via W3C in Primary Resources 2, 3 and 4 (in "Resources" following-provide links?)

Resources

(Disclaimer - These resources are just listed for illustration (not meant to be complete), there is no evaluation (other than the "rough" partitioning into two categories following) implied, and no endorsement is implied)

Primary Resources (seem to contain material directly pertinent to definitions/criteria for Open Standard/Public Specification):

1. Caplan, Priscilla, "Patents and Open Standards", National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Press, October 2003
2. Open Directory Project -Computers-Data Formats-Open Standards
3. Open Directory Project- Internet-Organizations-Standards
4. Open Standards Alliance Article
5. Open Standards Bearers Article
6. Open Standards: Principle and Practice

Secondary resources (may contain helpful information tangential (but not directly pertinent) to definition/criteria for Open Standards/Public Specification?):

1. Search for "Definition of Open Standard"
2. Search for "Definition of Public Specification"
3. Dictionary search on "specification"
4. Definition of "format"
5. Definition of "data"
6. Definition of "standard"
7. Definition of "open architecture"
8. List of file extensions