Glossary

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under-specification
An ICT specification that lacks sufficient specificity to enable interoperable implementation by all competitors. As plain text-based data formats have become popular, IT vendors are far less able to block competing product interoperability through devices such as trade secret binary data formats. Under-specification of plain text-based data format standards is emerging as the substitute tool for blocking interoperability whilst claiming that a standard is "open." Examples of grossly under-specified specifications include ISO/IEC:26300-2006 Open Document and ISO/IEC:29500-2008 Office Open XML. As a corollary to under-specification, its practitioners commonly advocate application-level interoperability initiatives to deflect attention from the under-specification issue.See also: application-level interoperability