🚀 go-pugleaf

Erik Naggum <enag@ifi.uio.no> writes:

>Phil Royse <proyse@peeras.demon.co.uk> writes:
>|
>|   I AM NOT WHINING....

>I'm sorry.  I inadvertently grouped you with all the "Mommy! ISO won't
>let me have their standards" folks.  I'm happy to see the exceptions.

>|   But, Erik the fact that you and I can afford to pay ISO (& BSI's)
>|   prices does not justify their decision to prevent them from being
>|   available via a lower cost, easy-to-disseminate route such as FTPing
>|   over the internet.

>They don't need to justify their decision.  As long as ISO can make the
>money they think they need to make by their present policies, and as
>long as there are people who're willing to pay for the ISO specs, ISO
>has no incentive to change their policies.

I'm far from a hard-core capitalist, but I have to believe that there 
are consequences to the fact that OSI, CCITT, and ANSI get paid when
someone buys copies of their standards, but not when they implement 
them, sell implementations, or use them.

Contrast this with many of the recent industry consortia - e.g. Frame
Relay Implementer's Forum, ATM Forum, or farther afield things like
the QIC-40 people. In most of these cases the groups involved make 
money by selling the technology itself (or hope to, in the future) and
often not only give their standards away free, but even pay for the
shipping.

>I think this discussion would benefit from regarding ISO as the
>publisher it is, and refrain from taking the consumer side, that ISO's
>in the business to benefit the readers of their publications.

ISO is in the business of defining voluntary, non-proprietary
standards. In this activity it is in competition with a lot of other
organizations, including private companies, industry consortia, and
individual national standards bodies. Its success can be measured by
how widely its standards are adopted by users and implementers.

I don't want to see the telecom and computer industries abandon the
public standardization process in preference for proprietary standards
developed behind closed doors. However, if proprietary standards
become more widespread, well-supported, and robust than open
standards, then customers are going to want them and I am going to
be providing them. 

If ISO acts as a publisher, restricting standards distribution to the
profitable end of the demand curve, then they aren't helping their
position as a standards organization. Unfortunately, as Erik notes,
if they abandon this position as a publisher, currently they will go
broke.

				Peter Desnoyers

--