OpenStandards.net A not-for-profit organization connecting people to open standards and the bodies that build and foster their growth. http://www.openstandards.net/

Why There Are Not GIF Files on GNU Pages Advocates against the use of image formats that are protected by patents. Presents a brief history of the GIF format as well as its open alternatives. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html

We Can Put an End to Word Attachments Richard Stallman's arguments against the use of proprietary formats in document exchange. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

MS-Word Is Not a Document Exchange Format Explains the appropriate use of document formats and argues against the use of Word attachments. http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html

Open Standards: Principles and Practice Illustrates the principles behind format standardization and the practice of promoting formats interoperability. http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html

Sincere Choice Intercommunication and file formats should follow standards that are sincerely open for all to implement, without royalty fees or discrimination. http://sincerechoice.org/

No Proprietary Binary Data Formats Why not use proprietary formats and what are the main open alternatives. http://www.podval.org/%7Esds/data.html

Avoid E-Mail Attachments, Especially Microsoft Word Short document with instructions to MS-Word users on alternatives they can use for document exchange. http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/attachments.html

We Can Put an End to Word Attachments - A Discussion Forum on Richard Stallman's document against file exchange in proprietary format. http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/10/1711238&mode=thread

Content Management and Edit Data Exchange Article on formats interoperability in audio and video content. http://www.edlmax.com/CONTENT2.html

Open Standards Repository Archive of standards relevant to the Open Source community, including licenses, public standards, protocols, RFCs. http://openstandards.org/

Business Case for Open Standards Paper investigating economical issues related to the diffusion of public standards. http://www.openstandards.net/viewOSnet1C.jsp?showModuleName=businessCaseForOpenStandards

The Free Standards Group A non-profit corporation to increase the use and acceptance of open source technologies through the application, development and promotion of standards. http://www.freestandards.org/

Open Source versus Open Standards Draws a distinction between open source advocacies and the promotion of public standards, warning against the confusion of these two initiatives. http://rss.com.com/2010-1071-995823.html

Cover Pages: Patents and Open Standards Investigates the effects of patent proliferation and criticizes reasonable and non-discriminatory license terms (RAND) for patented technologies. http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html

W3C Patent Policy Governs the handling of patents in the process of producing Web standards. The goal of this policy is to assure that Recommendations produced under this policy can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy

Open File Format Definition Definition proposed and discussed on the Texas Open Source Initiative Mailing List, as part of an initiative to promote the use of such standards in government projects. http://www.anansispaceworks.com/Documentation/BuildImage/Legal/tosi.openformatdef.2003.03.19.html

Burn All GIFs Campaign for replacing the patent-encumbered GIF format by open standard graphics. http://burnallgifs.org

Attachments in Proprietary Formats Considered Harmful Explains the risks of exchanging data in non-public format and suggests the main alternatives. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/email.html

Why Not Word! Why not using Word, Excel or any other proprietary format to communicate. http://www.rfc1149.net/documents/whynotword.html.en