This article talks about the two criteria a technology buyer can apply to determine if the 'open standard' they are intended to rely on is really open at all. Those criteria are – licensing and change control.
Licensing controls who gets to implement the standard and what price they have to pay to do it. Open standards are licensed under 'royalty free' terms which means that anyone can implement the standard any time they want without having to pay any money or ask anyone's permission. Closed standards are almost universally RAND or RAND-Z based.
Change control identifies who has the right to say what the standard is and change it as time goes on. Open standards are owned by open standards organizations which have reasonably open membership and voting procedures to approve standards that can not be hijacked by a small group of people/companies. Closed standards either haven't been submitted to any open standards organization, have been submitted under dubious circumstances or have been submitted to pseudo-open standards organizations created to provide the veneer of openness.
Of these two criteria licensing is the most critical. If you check nothing else, check the license because if it isn't royalty free it isn't open.