An OSC paper explaining why royalty free open standards are essential for reducing public sector ICT expenditure and illustrating the vital role that public sector ICT could play as a source of innovation and growth in the economy.

Growth, innovation and creation have come about largely through the ability to interact easily with minimal transaction costs, delivered by using royalty free open standards.

When the public sector does not adopt royalty free open standards for software:

• the public sector is less able to reduce its dependence on a small group of suppliers (an “oligopoly” with all the attendant risks)
• users of online public services are constrained in their choice of software
• users of online public services become locked in to a small group of suppliers
• online services constrain innovation and growth in the knowledge economy

We have published a report on the wider importance of royalty free open standards and you can download it here (65 pages, pdf, approx 1.8MByte).

This international reference work is targeted towards lawyers, jurists and academics.

The book provides an introduction to software protection, a general analysis of legislation and case law for a number of countries, e.g., the United Kingdom.

It can also be purchased here.

Thomas Thym has kindly agreed to allow us to host a copy of his paper discussing the seven principles of building open source communities given at the Desktop Summit in 2010.

It's available here

Kemp Little have undertaken an analysis of the implications of version 2 of the European Interoperability Framework

They've kindly agreed to let us put it on our website