🚀 go-pugleaf

ses@cmns-sun.think.com (Simon Edward Spero) writes:

>Getting back to the subject of the original message, one thing that
>might be worth a try is setting up a 'free OSI foundation':  ...

A more realistic effort then founding a 'Free OSI foundation' (who
will pay all this?) would be an effort to find enough volunteers
on the USENET who write good summaries of the most interesting ISO
standards. I would offer managing an anonymous ftp server where all
these summaries will be stored and I have already written a summary
of asynchronous HDLC framing (ISO 3309/Ad.1-3). Who else wants to
contribute documents that explain ISO standards in detail to
the citizens of netland?

There are many ISO standards with less then 30 pages. Especially these
short documents (e.g. ISO 8601: date and time format, NSAP adr., ...) are 
quite easy to translate in a language much better understandable to the
average programmer (e.g. octetts -> bytes) and producing a new
text with the same normative content is often possible within a weekend.

Only the contents (= the text and graphics) are copyrighted by ISO,
not the protocols, formats, APIs, definitions, ... (BUT: Some ISO
standards describe patented algorithms, for instance nearly everything
related with compression techniques, e.g. JPEG, JBIG, MPEG).

If you don't have access to the ISO documents, well, in Germany it is
completely legal to make up to seven copies of everything for private use
only, so there would be a way to bring single cheap copies to
the people who will translate them into better understandable and
free (non-commercial!) versions.

It won't be too difficult to get a moderated goup (comp.doc.iso-summary?) for
distributing the results and I'm quite sure that the results will soon
become as popular as the RFCs. A standardized layout and a proof reading 
concept might also be useful.

Good Idea? Go ahead!

Markus

BTW: These efforts are unlikely to do any harm to ISO, as the people who
really need the original version (implementors, conformance testers, ..)
will still order the paper versions. And yes, believe it or not, there
are people without Internet access out there in the world (#>5*10^9). :-)

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student -=-=- University of Erlangen, Germany
Internet: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de  |  X.500 entry available
-A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't-
-even know existed can render your own computer unusable. (Leslie Lamport)-