henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/10/90)
In article <1938@pbhyg.PacBell.COM> balavi@PacBell.COM (Behzad Alavi) writes: > Copyrights seem to limit the scope of distribution > and usage, which are apparently not what International > Standards were designed to do. Copyrights don't have to do anything of the sort; the issue is not whether the stuff is copyrighted, but what restrictions the copyright holder places on redistribution etc. In practice, ISO seems to be exactly like all the other standards outfits: the revenue from sales of high-priced documents is significant and they're not prepared to give it up. ISO does not have magic sources of funding that eliminate all financial worries. -- SVR4: every feature you ever | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology wanted, and plenty you didn't.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
news@haddock.ima.isc.com (overhead) (02/13/90)
In article <1990Feb9.192505.26290@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In practice, ISO seems to be exactly like all the other standards outfits: >the revenue from sales of high-priced documents is significant and they're >not prepared to give it up. ISO does not have magic sources of funding >that eliminate all financial worries. This seems to be rather circular reasoning. i.e. ISO exists to produce expensive documents to pay for its existence. If there is some need for ISO beyond that perceived by ISO itself, the market place will pay for it. GM for a while saw a need for the ISO based MAP protocols, and invested in their definition and implementation. It appears to be much easier for a government, or corporation to specify the ISO protocols when they don't have to pay for their development, and easier to back away from an implementation that is too slow or cumbersome when little money is invested up front. What I'm trying to say here is that the people who want ISO implementations (end users) should pay for the standards developments, not the potential implementers. If funding cannot be found for this, it would imply to me that the ISO standards effort has no value. Jim
hrs1@cbnewsi.ATT.COM (herman.r.silbiger) (02/13/90)
In article <15930@haddock.ima.isc.com>, news@haddock.ima.isc.com (overhead) writes: > too slow or cumbersome when little money is invested up front. What > I'm trying to say here is that the people who want ISO implementations > (end users) should pay for the standards developments, not the > potential implementers. If funding cannot be found for this, it would > imply to me that the ISO standards effort has no value. > > Jim People that want the standards do pay for that development. All attendants at a standards meeting were sent by their companies. Users as well as developers participate. The cost to the users is also reflected in the cost of the product. Not only does it cost the participants time, but also travel and living expenses. Just add up the cost of 40 engineers for a week, round trip travel, often abroad, hotel rooms and meals, etc. The results are available to everybody. The only cost to non participants is paying the administartion, publication and distribution costs. Or perhaps you feel that, since it did not cost anything to develop the standard, you should also not have to pay for the document, and they should not be copyrighted. Herman Silbiger
xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) (02/13/90)
In article <15930@haddock.ima.isc.com> jimm@ima.ima.isc.com (Jim McGrath) writes: = In article <1990Feb9.192505.26290@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp = (Henry Spencer) writes: == In practice, ISO seems to be exactly like all the other standards == outfits: the revenue from sales of high-priced documents is == significant and they're not prepared to give it up. ISO does not == have magic sources of funding that eliminate all financial worries. In part. Most of the workers on ISO WG's are funded by their employers; a very few are personally funded. On the presumption that ISO includes office staff, and on the assurity that it distributes expensive paper documents, those costs must be somehow covered. My experience is with ANSI, but I expect the same history applies to ISO. The ANSI X3 headquarters personnel costs used to be covered by CBEMA, a business computer consortium. When the size of X3 led to costs more than CBEMA was willing to cover, methods such as high copy fees for working documents and "voluntary" contributions for committee participation were incorporated. For those of us on the various nets, with our long history of ftp and uucp mail accessable archives, funded by organizations willing to provide the disk space and telecomm lines, and managed by volunteers who stand among the true unsung heros of the human race, it seems incomprehensible that _paper_ copies of anything might be needed for distributing information. However, in truth, many (most) standards have nothing to do with computers, and are not used by computer sophisticated organizational entities, so paper/microfiche/other hardcopy is a mandate. Given that they must provide paper standards, and must sell them to recover costs, the standards organizations have found that making a profit on the paper copies can solve their funding problems for permanent staff. Once having been seduced into this method of self-funding, now free (electronic) distribution of the standards information directly threatens the financial integrity of the standards body. Since the standards groups are non-profit, and probably financially marginal on their best fiscal years, this leads to strong rejection of electronic distribution of copyrighted standards "for free". Even I, who have been denied participation in three standards efforts where I am competent to give expert criticism by poverty vis-a-vis the cost of paper standards draft documents, have to sympathise with the difficulty electronic distribution poses to the standards bodies. = This seems to be rather circular reasoning. i.e. ISO exists to = produce expensive documents to pay for its existence. If there is = some need for ISO beyond that perceived by ISO itself, the market = place will pay for it. GM for a while saw a need for the ISO based = MAP protocols, and invested in their definition and implementation. The usual participants in standards activities are from four areas: potential implementers of the standard, very large customers who will benefit from the existance of the standard applied to a product, government agencies whose charter covers the same area as the standard, and academics whose discipline includes the area of the standard. There are no direct participants (that I have seen, of course) whose reason for participation is that they are from among the "common man" whose money eventually drives all markets. The reasons are many, but the best characterization is probably that high cost of participation must be justified by high benefit of participation. = It appears to be much easier for a government, or corporation to = specify the ISO protocols when they don't have to pay for their = development, Actually, it is usually those who participate who are first to benefit, and most adamant about participation. It helps to have early access to the draft documents, and it is usually policy of any organization funding participation that they will recover costs by using the standard. = and easier to back away from an implementation that is too slow or = cumbersome when little money is invested up front. Oops! Please differentiate in thinking about this subject between standards (ideals) and implementations (reality). The quality of an implementation does not necessarily have (but may have) any relationship to the quality or cost of a standard. = What I'm trying to say here is that the people who want ISO = implementations (end users) should pay for the standards = developments, not the potential implementers. The "market place" does not provide an easy method to recover these costs from the end beneficiaries of standards, in major parts because the beneficiaries of a standard are very hard to identify, and because the benefits of a standard are extremely hard to quantify, and not often self-evident to the end user. A particularly clear example is screw thread standards. Unless I buy a product made in another country with different standards, I may never in a lifetime become aware that a screw thread standard exists or is needed. Thus I would probably resist a surcharge on each screw I buy to pay for standards body activity, and I would surely challenge your evaluation of the amount I should pay. Still, each new screw manufacturer needs to be able to buy the standards document, and so the documents' maintenance needs funding. = If funding cannot be found for this, it would imply to me that the = ISO standards effort has no value. Well, the creations of standards _are_ funded, and the level of participation implies that they are funded with some enthusiasm. What are not funded are free copies of the resulting standards information. It is a bit of a shame in this era of comp.sources.* and data piracy that the free lunch has come to seem an entitlement to the computer community. I do believe that the current pricing of standards _draft_ documents actively precludes or lessens expert commentary, probably to the detriment of the standards creation process. But it is exactly those who chose to pay the existing (high) prices for paper standards who are the true "market place" for the standard, and this is probably as appropriate a way to recover standards maintenance costs as any other. I think this is an improvement over expecting the standards bodies to exist on corporate and government "charity", money which eventually is recovered by product prices and taxes from you and I, anyway. -- Again, my opinions, not the account furnishers'. xanthian@well.sf.ca.us (Kent Paul Dolan) xanthian@ads.com - expiring soon; please use Well address for replies. Kent, the (bionic) man from xanth, now available as a build-a-xanthian kit at better toy stores near you. Warning - some parts proven fragile. -> METAFONT, TeX, graphics programming done on spec -- (415) 964-4486 <-
webber@athos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (02/13/90)
Actually the copyright issue for international standards should not be seen as one of people looking for a free lunch versus people looking to earn a living. It should instead be seen as a matter of technical people wanting adequate documentation when they buy a standard- compliant object. Here I sit on a workstation that claims to implement IEEE floating point arithmetic, Fortran77, will doubless soon have ANSI-C, runs Common Lisp, is probably POSIX-comformant, and comes with CORE and CGI implementations (as well as add on GKS and PHIGS options). There was a time when I could sit down to a UNIX box and read K&R on line as well spec/source for the rest of UNIX (except for dec's PDP-11 manuals, alas, which were only available in hardcopy). Now, with nearly 8 meg of man pages, I find myself quite often feeling like I had just gotten a Mac with a user's guide and a $100 of hardcopy heavily thumbed documentation off in someone's office down the hall (I hear they FINALLY are getting most of that online via hypercard). Would you accept a UNIX system without man pages? Then why a IEEE floating point processor, an ANSI C compiler, Common Lisp, an F77 compiler, a POSIX system, CORE, CGI, GKS, or PHIGS, without usable online documentation to grep and search? Do you expect it to be free? Of course not, but you do expect it to be a relatively minor portion of the system cost. Indeed, if the standards committees mandated user-level availability of their copyrighted documentation in order to be compliant and asked for a small fee for use of same to be collected by the vendor, wouldn't it work out even better than now when most people go to a library to look up a standard (or more likely just do what seems to work and hope they are ok) rather than go through the hassle of getting a personal copy? If someone brought out a computer system that documented online every aspect of itself, I wonder how many new de facto standards would suddenly sweep the landscape. How much is the growth of UNIX due to its original distribution in this manner? --- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/14/90)
In article <15930@haddock.ima.isc.com> jimm@ima.ima.isc.com (Jim McGrath) writes: >>In practice, ISO seems to be exactly like all the other standards outfits: >>the revenue from sales of high-priced documents is significant and they're >>not prepared to give it up. ISO does not have magic sources of funding... >This seems to be rather circular reasoning. i.e. ISO exists to produce >expensive documents to pay for its existence... No more so than saying that DEC exists to build computers which pay for its existence. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If standards are to exist, somebody has to develop them, and the development will cost money, which has to be paid by *someone*. Someone specific and easily identifiable, who is willing to pay for it -- just "the marketplace" won't do, unless you explain exactly who you are talking about and exactly how they will be asked to pay and exactly why they will do so. The standards bodies find that people are willing to pay for copies of standards, and that this is a good way to recover overhead costs. What exactly are you suggesting as an alternative? >I'm trying to say here is that the people who want ISO implementations >(end users) should pay for the standards developments, not the >potential implementers... Most of the cost of developing standards is people time, which is paid for by interested implementors and big users. Most of them proceed to pass these costs on to *their* customers, and it eventually reaches the end users. An implementor who buys a copy of a standard will presumably pass the cost of that on to his end users as soon as he can. How is this, the current situation, different from what you are proposing? -- "The N in NFS stands for Not, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology or Need, or perhaps Nightmare"| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu