For Apperta Foundation, an open platform adheres to the following eight principles:

1. Open Standards Based
2. Shared Common Information Models
3. Supporting Application Portability
4. Federatable
5. Vendor and Technology Neutral
6. Supporting Open Data
7. Providing Open APIs
8. Operability (as in DevOps)

In practical application, “openness” has principles and domains.  Principles include: transparency, access, participation, democracy. Domains can be illustrated as Open Resources, Open Processes, and Open Effects (Schlagwein et al., 2017):

Figure 2‑1 Openness as a Higher Order Concept (Schlagwein et al., 2017 Figure 1 Figure 1)

Openness is not fixed, either as a definition, or as a state of being. Openness emerges and evolves in open-source projects; it can mean rigour (compliance with an open standard); ability to participate (lowered barriers to connectivity or engagement); open implementation (transparency); or an open process (Curto-Millet & Shaikh, 2017).