Open Standards and Open Source

Having set baseline definitions, the survey went on to ask a series of questions regarding current and planned participation in Open Source Projects as well as attitudes towards the need for cooperation between Open Standards and Open Source. Eighty six percent of survey respondents indicated that their organization was either maintaining or increasing their participation in Open Source organizations while only 2 percent indicated they were decreasing participation.
 
More than 75 percent of respondents felt that Machine-to-machine/IoT products and implementations will rely heavily on Open Standards and over 60 percent felt that these products would also rely heavily on Open Source implementations.  When asked the same question about next generation telecom network products, nearly 70 percent felt they would rely heavily on Open Standards and nearly 50 percent felt they would rely on Open Source.
 
Respondents were then asked, “In the scope of telecom services deployment, what do you think will be the dominant trend in the next several years?”  Over 80 percent indicated that Open Source implementations of Open Standards specifications would be the dominant trend.


 
However, when asked if they believe that RAND based specifications can be successfully implemented into Open Source projects, 64 percent either said “No” or “Not Sure”.  Complexity and incompatibility of licensing terms was most often cited as the biggest hurdle to overcome. 

These last three questions indicate a dominant industry trend towards products and services based on Open Standards and Open Source, but also reservations as to whether this can be achieved within the same product. This presents a challenge and a call-to-action for the SDOs and the Open Source communities who will be involved in the definition and development of these products and services.  Eighty percent of respondents felt that the Open Standards community would benefit from a closer relationship to the Open Source community, stating that early Open Source implementations of standards can provide important feedback and help with proliferation of a standard. Conversely, 77 percent of respondents felt that the Open Source community would benefit from a closer relationship to the Open Standards community, stating that Open Standards can help Open Source projects with overall architecture and system design considerations, quality, interoperability and roadmap.

As the results of this survey show, Open Source software is a growing trend in the next generation mobile and IoT industries and standardization will continue to be the foundation on which interoperable products and services are built. The vitality of the wireless ecosystem demands that the standards development community and the Open Source community bridge the gap in work practices and deliverables to ensure efficiency and interoperability across the mobile value chain.

Survey details can be found at www.openmobilealliance.org.