psm@manta.NOSC.MIL (Scot Mcintosh) (03/09/90)
Does the ANSI C standard exist at an ftp site?
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Scot McIntosh
Internet: psm@helios.nosc.mil
UUCP: {ihnp4,akgua,decvax,decwest,ucbvax}!sdscvax!nosc!psmhenry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/10/90)
In article <1028@manta.NOSC.MIL> psm@manta.nosc.mil.UUCP (Scot Mcintosh) writes: >Does the ANSI C standard exist at an ftp site? Sigh, this one belongs in our (nonexistent) Frequently Asked Questions list. ANSI standards are not available in machine-readable form. This is not stupidity or backwardness, but a deliberate policy decision. The major reasons are (a) concern about mutated versions, and (b) concern about loss of revenue (sales of standards are the main source of financing for ANSI). -- MSDOS, abbrev: Maybe SomeDay | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology an Operating System. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
dave@cs.arizona.edu (David P. Schaumann) (03/10/90)
In article <1990Mar9.165405.13140@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > > ANSI standards are not available in machine-readable form. This is not > stupidity or backwardness, but a deliberate policy decision. The major > reasons are (a) concern about mutated versions, and (b) concern about > loss of revenue (sales of standards are the main source of financing > for ANSI). > -- This brings up 2 questions: 1) What is the address to write to ANSI 2) How much do they charge for the ANSI C standard? > MSDOS, abbrev: Maybe SomeDay | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology > an Operating System. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu COBOL == Corny Old Businessman's Obsolete Language ;) Dave
mcdaniel@amara.uucp (Tim McDaniel) (03/11/90)
dave@cs.arizona.edu (David P. Schaumann) writes:
1) What is the address to write to ANSI
2) How much do they charge for the ANSI C standard?
American National Standards Institute
Sales Department
1430 Broadway
New York, NY 10018
Phone (212) 642-4900; fax (212) 302-1286
Standard official designation: ANSI~X3.159-1989.
Cost: may not be set yet.
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Tim McDaniel
Applied Dynamics International, Ann Arbor, MI
Internet: mcdaniel%amara.uucp@mailgw.cc.umich.edu
UUCP: {uunet,sharkey}!amara!mcdanielhenry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/11/90)
In article <130@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (David P. Schaumann) writes: > 1) What is the address to write to ANSI Tim McDaniel has already answered this one, so I won't. However, I would observe that Global Engineering Documents, (800)854-7179 or (714)261-1455, buys in bulk from ANSI and sells to the public... and they are easier to deal with. (For example, they take phone orders and accept credit cards, and last I checked, ANSI does neither.) > 2) How much do they charge for the ANSI C standard? At last report, the ANSI C standard had not yet been published and hence is not yet available. Global (but not ANSI) will sell you the Dec 1988 draft, which is identical to the standard except for some wording changes. Publication of the real standard is imminent. -- MSDOS, abbrev: Maybe SomeDay | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology an Operating System. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
scjones@sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones) (03/12/90)
In article <1990Mar9.165405.13140@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > ANSI standards are not available in machine-readable form. This is not > stupidity or backwardness, but a deliberate policy decision. The major > reasons are (a) concern about mutated versions, and (b) concern about > loss of revenue (sales of standards are the main source of financing > for ANSI). At the last X3J11 meeting there was some interesting information presented that has a direct bearing on this question. Apparently, there is a member of the Fortran committee who got fed up with the complaints about the difficulty and expense of getting documents from Global Engineering, so he started publicizing that he would make copies and mail them out to all interested parties at cost. Now X3 has in the past maintained that they own all committee documents and any distribution without their permission is forbidden (which is why the C drafts weren't published in SIGPLAN Notices, despite the desires of the editors of that publication and the C committee). However, the new head of X3 wanted to be sure he was on solid ground before taking any action, so he had the lawyers look into the question. What they discovered is that X3's prior claims are completely groundless. Copyright law basically states that the author of a work owns all the rights unless they are explicitly assigned to someone else. No one on any X3 committee has ever signed anything assigning any rights to either X3 or ANSI, so the lawyers' conclusion was that neither X3 >nor ANSI< has any justification for claiming a copyright on either drafts or final standards. Thus, X3 has given up the idea of limiting distribution of drafts. This leaves us in an interesting position. As far as I know, ANSI still believes they own copyrights on standards, but X3 knows they are wrong. Certainly it is not in the best interest of anyone to have mutated copies of standards extant, but it would be beneficial to many to have electronic versions, etc. So, the bottom line is that you can probably do anything you want with the final standard, but you will probably have to fight a legal battle with ANSI sooner or later. ---- Larry Jones UUCP: uunet!sdrc!scjones SDRC scjones@SDRC.UU.NET 2000 Eastman Dr. BIX: ltl Milford, OH 45150-2789 AT&T: (513) 576-2070 "You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well MINE are even WORSE!" -Calvin