A framework for achieving a recognized level of quality within an organization. Achievement of a quality standard demonstrates that an organization has met the requirements laid out by a certifying body. Quality standards recognized on an international basis include ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. 

Shared Quality

    A STANDARD OF QUALITY is laudable, but it can work only if all pertinent players keep that standard in mind as they move forward. To ensure that designers and manufacturers are almost literally on the same page, General Motors has implemented a Web-based software system that uses a common design... 

Quality construction.

    Vises feature quality construction and materials built to ISO 9002 standard. Machinable/reversible quick change top jaws standard on all models. Vises available in steel and aluminum, hydraulic and manual.

 The Quality Policy

    The ISO9001: 2000 standard identifies the techniques of policies and objectives primary tools of top management to direct the organization toward its quality goals for the products and processes of the company. The quality policy is a general statement made by top management that it intends to achieve quality because...

 Additional Resources

 ISO 9000: international standard for quality

    Suppliers selling to Europe are facing a rigid new standard of quality in order to maintain critical contracts and achieve new ones. This quality standard is ISO 9000, which assures customers that their suppliers have implemented a quality system that has been evaluated and verified by independent auditors. ... 

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed (e.g. open process).

 The terms "open" and "standard" have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage. The term "open" is usually restricted to royalty-free technologies while the term "standard" is sometimes restricted to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis.

 The definitions of the term "open standard" used by academics, the European Union and some of its member governments or parliaments such as Denmark, France, and Spain preclude open standards requiring fees for use, as do the New Zealand and the Venezuelan governments. On the standard organisation side, the W3C ensures that its specifications can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis.

 Many definitions of the term "standard" permit patent holders to impose "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalty fees and other licensing terms on implementers and/or users of the standard. For example, the rules for standards published by the major internationally recognized standards bodies such as the IETF, ISO, IEC, and ITU-T permit their standards to contain specifications whose implementation will require payment of patent licensing fees. Among these organizations, only the IETF and ITU-T explicitly refer to their standards as "open standards", while the others refer only to producing "standards". The IETF and ITU-T use definitions of "open standard" that allow "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent licensing fee requirements, but in practice most are royalty free.

The term "open standard" is sometimes coupled with "open source" with the idea that a standard is not truly open if it does not have a complete free/open source reference implementation available. [1] 

Open standards which specify formats are sometimes referred to as open formats.

 Many specifications that are sometimes referred to as standards are proprietary and only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright on the specification. As such these specifications are not considered to be fully Open.

 In 2002 and 2003 the controversy about using reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing for the use of patented technology in web standards increased. Bruce Perens, important associations as FSF or FFII and others have argued that the use of patents restricts who can implement a standard to those able or willing to pay for the use of the patented technology. The requirement to pay some small amount per user, is often an insurmountable problem for free/open source software implementations which can be redistributed by anyone. Royalty free (RF) licensing is generally the only possible license for free/open source software implementations. Version 3 of the GNU General Public License includes a section that enjoins anyone who distributes a program released under the GPL from enforcing patents on subsequent users of the software or derivative works.

 One result of this controversy was that many governments (including the Danish, French and Spanish governments singly and the EU collectively) specifically affirmed that "open standards" required royalty-free licenses. Some standards organizations, such as the W3C, modified their processes to essentially only permit royalty-free licensing. Oasis-Open allows committees to operate either on a RAND basis or a royalty-free basis, but OASIS does say to grant "open standards" when they are not royalty-free.

 Patents for software, formulas and algorithms are currently enforceable in the US but not in the EU. The European Patent Convention Article 52 paragraph (2)(c) expressly prohibits algorithms, business methods and software from being covered by patents. The US has only allowed them since 1989 and there has been growing controversy in recent years as to either the benefit or feasibility.

 A standards body and its associated processes cannot force a patent holder to give up its right to charge license fees, especially if the company concerned is not a member of the standards body and unconstrained by any rules that were set during the standards development process. In fact, this element discourages some standards bodies from adopting an "open" approach, fearing that they will lose out if their members are more constrained than non-members. Few bodies will carry out (or require their members to carry out) a full patent search. Ultimately, the only sanctions a standards body can apply on a non-member when patent licensing is demanded is to cancel the standard, try to rework around it, or work to invalidate the patent. Standards bodies such as W3C and OASIS require[citation needed] that the use of required patents be granted under a royalty-free license as a condition for joining the body or a particular working group, and this is generally considered enforceable.[citation needed]