🚀 go-pugleaf

jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) writes:

>In article <BvB1oM.M2r@cgl.ucsf.edu>, davidr@socrates.ucsf.edu (David Rivkin%Kollman) writes...
>>For me, the cost of purchasing all of the standards that I need would eat
>>up almost 2 years of my income (from fellowships) and I am trying to get my 
>>work done.  This makes FTP or even online library access to those docs.
>>a necessity.  but that does not exist.  So no work gets done.

>That sounds extremely bogus to me.  Unless your assistantship is for
>$10/month, I can't imagine how you could come up with a list of standards
>required for a dissertation which would cost more than a thousand bucks. 
>My perception is that most people are just lazy; they're not willing to go
>out of their way to get copies of standards since FTP is so simple.  

>However, if you're sincere, then here's several ways you can get what you
>want:

Other possibilities:

1 - McGraw-Hill publishes a set of volumes that cover most of the ISO/
CCITT/FIPS standards in communications. It's about 2 shelf feet, and 
I've seen it advertised for ~$600. [this implies that OSI and CCITT are
willing to license their copyrights for a lot less than the list price
of the standards documents.]

2 - Working documents that go on to become standards are not covered
by copyright, at least in the CCITT. Thus if you pay the (exhorbitant)
per-page costs to Omnicom or whoever to get copies of the final Plenary
drafts of various standards, you can make as many copies as you want.
(or such is my understanding...)

Of course, that doesn't help you if you want a single copy. Also, they
might stop selling copies of these documents once the final standard
is published. If anyone wanted to set up a "Free OSI Specs" operation,
this might be a place to start. 

By the way, for anyone interested in a bit more detail on the mechanics
of standards bodies funding, etc., I would recommend the U.S. Office of
Technology Assessment report "Global Standards - Building Blocks for
the Future". It's not well written (read the first chapter last - it's
the conclusion for people who don't want to read the whole thing, and
in a large part repeats selected parts of following chapters) but it's
cheap and has a lot of footnotes and hard facts on who gets their money
where, who hates who, etc.

[110 pages, $5.50 (+25% shipping for international orders) to New Orders,
Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954
USA]

				Peter Desnoyers
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