Thread View: comp.protocols.iso
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Started by Lon Stowell
Tue, 15 Jan 1991 23:35
Re: High Cost of OSIng
Author: Lon Stowell
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 1991 23:35
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 1991 23:35
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AMEN. I suspect that the high cost of standards is seriously impacting roll-out. Smaller (read leading edge) high tech companies are often unable to afford adequate documentation, educational institutions ditto...so you don't have the infrastructure of graduates and hackers familiar with the standards. Larger companies buy them, but even there the support personnel, etc. cannot afford their own copies. Why does this happen? I have been told that the standards, in the US, are "owned" by ANSII...and that THEY set the prices. Being aware of the VME hassle where Motorola cannot even give away free copies of the spec anymore w/o paying a copyright, I can believe it. How to resolve it? Attack your congress-critters. Ask them if they are willing to GIVE away the US high-tech leadership in the race to OSI. Ask about whether they are interested in perpetuating large lethargic companies or encouraging the quick-reacting smaller high tech ones IMHO this country so desperately needs. NOW off the soap box. Need HELP ___________ I had an advert that claimed to have all of the 1988 OSI, ANSII, CCITT, and a couple other data comm standards available for only $750.00 Unfortunately I lost the darn advert. Does anyone know who this was? (The '84 stds were $400...but admittedly much less paper...and $750 is MUCH less than most previous prices....about 1 full zero worth..)
Re: High Cost of OSIng
Author: Carl S. Gutekunst
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 1991 18:27
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 1991 18:27
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Prices for Blue Books vary a lot; United Nations Bookshop is a good 20% cheaper than Omnicom, and gives much better service, IMHO. ISO documents can be had for free when they are in the Draft stage, *if* you know the right people at NIST or ANSI. After that, ANSI gives exclusive selling rights to Omnicom, who charges whatever they think they can get away with. (The docs I have gotten straight from NIST were of excellent reproduction quality, and were shipped promptly. From Omnicom the quality is highly variable, and the service mediocre. They also appear to exhaust their supplies of out-dated drafts before sending current ones.) >I had an advert that claimed to have all of the 1988 OSI, ANSI, CCITT, and >a couple other data comm standards available for only $750.00. That sounds like the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Datacommunications Standards, 4th Edition. It is a six volume set, and includes many of the most relevant standards, but is by no means exhaustive. (The Blue Books alone are about four times the size of the McGraw-Hill set, but have a lot of drek in them that most datacomm developers don't care about.) We have the 3rd edition, which contains the '84 standards, and have been very pleased with it; the editors did a very good job of selecting the most relevant documents. <csg>
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