Standards represent a state of understanding, more or less at a code or API-level, that multiple parties can agree on. A standard may not necessary support all potential use cases, but it should be developed to cover the common cases well, and make the uncommon cases not impossible to support.

The current debate in the cloud computing community sounds a lot like the call I made some time ago arguing that Facebook and OpenSocial should find ways to collaborate on more social networking standards to enhance interop. I have largely been impressed by Facebook's public statements to support open standards and protocols where they exist, and in joining the OpenID Foundation have made what I hope is the first of many steps towards becoming a good citizen of the open web community.

"We need to understand when parts of the technology need to be interchangeable (”substitutable”) versus simply interoperable." — Bob Sutor

Our challenge then is to define or clarify what "open" means to the uninitiated audience, that has not necessarily had to grapple with the related but different concepts of substitutability and interoperability.

Example of Facebook platform.