Certified Open® provides a self-certified framework within which products can be evaluated in terms of the amount of lock-in that they incur when deployed by users. The framework is intended to be consistent across a range of products and is designed from the users' not the suppliers' point of view. Within the context of Certified Open, the term 'open' can be taken to mean:

• Freedom from vendor lock-in

• Openness to substitution by competing products

The questions are necessarily broad in scope. Whilst it would be possible to certify a product by adhering 'to the letter' of the questions, the intent of this framework is to provide a broad guide to the practical degree of lock-in that is likely to occur when a product is used in the ways envisaged by its designers and suppliers. It is therefore important to understand the spirit as well as the letter of the framework when responding.

Lock-in to a product can occur in many ways. This framework sets out to clarify the obvious forms of lock-in that occur via technical issues such as for example:

• Dependence on undocumented or proprietary protocols

• Dependence on undocumented or proprietary data formats

• Licensing terms that preclude the use of alternative products

• Reliance on extensions to standards whereby users are obliged to use those extensions to obtain good performance

• The use of 'standards' that are based on patents or other forms of restrictions that constrain others from providing compatible competing implementations

The framework should be used to ascertain the degree of lock-in implied by the use of a product and then users may make their own decisions based on their requirements.

To achieve this, the framework also takes into account commercial practices such as licensing or marketing agreements to the extent where they may result in reduced substitutability as far as the user is concerned. It does not address customer retention through such practices as the provision of better support or lower prices than competitors unless those are on discriminatory grounds.

This framework attempts to provide consistent way to evaluate the cost and difficulty of substituting one product with another that performs equivalent functionality as far as its user is concerned. Most industries have the concept of plug-compatible parts where a component supplied by one vendor can be substituted by components supplied by others. The IT industry can demonstrate partial success in these areas. Examples of generally low lock-in include:

• PCI cards for purposes such as network connectivity, graphics displays and similar tasks

• SMTP mail exchangers such as Postfix, Sendmail, Exim providing broadly compatible services

• The IP networking stack (TCP, UDP, ICMP etc.) which has been reimplemented many times

• MIME email clients using SMPT, POP and IMAP

• Database technology based on standards, capable of use in a range of environments (those environments sometimes known as 'platforms')

For the user, lock-in to a single product is one issue, consequential lock-in is another. Examples of consequential lock-in are where for instance: a product implies the use of another such as the operating environment e.g. software that only runs on one vendor's operating system; a product is dependent on services from a proprietary server architecture that is not itself substitutable; a product depends on data formats that can only be accessed via a proprietary tool set; and of course many others.

The assessment framework requires evaluation of the product across the following domains:

• Client View - Describes the way in which the end-user interacts with the product.

• Software View - Broad, covering both software as an entity and as a component.

• Hardware View - describes the physical devices associated with the product.

• Data View - The data created, used or stored by the product.

• Business View - Recognises that lock-in is not only a technical matter.

Each product or service is evaluated and given an appropriate (gold/ silver/ bronze) certificate. The level of certification works like this; in terms of the overall scores:

Gold – 90%+ score

Silver – 60 – 89% score

Bronze – 40 – 59% score

The full certificate will provide a breakdown for each of the 5 categories (Client View etc.) as to whether, within the categories, the product or service is at Gold/ Silver or Bronze level. A copy of the Certified Open certificate is attached as Appendix 1

The Certified Open programme in general, and the Certification Framework in particular, represent strong value propositions for each of the key stakeholders:

• Public Authorities – readily available accepted criteria against which to assess the openness of products and services.

• Procurement – the ability to specify and objectively assess the openness of products and services.

• Hiring Managers – the ability to assess products and services developed by would be job applicants.

• External Service Providers – differentiation based on the degree of openness achieved by the product or service; in addition, a tool to guide developments by accredited partners.

• Free Software/Open Source Product Providers – greater visibility for quantified advantages of services and products offered.

• Enterprise Computing – the greatest possible level of granularity for ensuring openness of products and services in order to avoid supplier lock-in.

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