The hurdles of standardisation today Making standards is not like any other tasks. In most cases it is technical in nature because it is about agreeing on and documenting how certain things should be done to claim to be conforming to the standard. Standards can be developed unilaterally by someone powerful enough to tell other people how they should do things. More often, however, standards are developed collaboratively by people who share an interest in a standard, i.e. in enabling…

Introduction In the parable of the Talents the Gospel tells the story of a master who entrusts 5 talents (a large amount of money at that time) to one servant and 2 talents to another before leaving for a long travel. The first servant works hard and doubles his talents, while the second plays safe and buries the talents. When the master returns, he awards the first servant and punishes the second. Thirty-one years ago, MPEG was given the field…

Introduction Some could think that the title is an oxymoron. Indeed standards, certainly international ones, are published by not-for-profit organisations. How could they have a business model? The answer is that around a standard there are quite a few entities, some of which are far from being not-for-profit. Therefore, this article intends to analyse how business models can influence standards. The actors of standardisation Let’s first have a look at the actors of standardisation. The first actor is the organisation…