An architecture that has been made public and is not proprietary, and which may therefore form the basis of competing products (such as add-on hardware) offered by a variety of companies.
Origin
1980s; earliest use found in Computerworld.
Definition of open architecture in US English:
open architecture
noun
Computing
An architecture that has been made public and is not proprietary, and which may therefore form the basis of competing products (such as add-on hardware) offered by a variety of companies.