Open Source Software reference implementations for standards issued by different standards setting organisations: availability, perceptions and practices

Abstract

Software reference implementations of ICT standards have an important role for verifying that a standard is implementable, supporting interoperability testing among other implementations, and providing feedback to the standard development process. Providing reference implementations and widely used implementations of a standard as Open Source Software promotes wide deployment in software systems, interoperability, longevity of systems and associated digital assets, and avoidance of different lock-in effects. In this paper results are reported on the availability of, and perceptions and practices concerning, reference implementations and widely deployed implementations provided as Open Source Software for standards issued by different standards setting organisations. Specifically, findings draw from observations and analyses related to software implementations for identified standards and policy statements, issued by ETSI, IEC, IEEE, IETF, ISO, ITU-T, OASIS, and W3C.

EURAS Conference 2023: introduction to the special issue

“…Paper number four is titled 'Open Source Software reference implementations for standards issued by different standards setting organisations: availability, perceptions and practices (Gamalielsson et al, 2024). It represents an co-operation between academia and industry and was written by Jonas Gamalielsson, Björn Lundell (both University of Skövde), Christoffer Brax (Combitech AB), Tomas Persson (Digitalist Sweden), Anders Mattsson (Husqvarna AB), Tomas Gustavsson (PrimeKey Solutions AB) and Jonas Feist (RedBridge AB), all from Sweden.…”