rusty@WIN1.IMS.ABB.COM ("Rusty Rowell") (01/15/91)
> > ... Is the high cost of standards > impeding efforts to adopt those standards? Do you know less about OSI > because you can't readily (cheaply) obtain standards specifications? Indirectly. I am frequently annoyed by the fact that I can't get these documents electronically as the TCP/IP RFC's. In trying to create an intelligent design for a network, I would like to see what the OSI standard will be in the future. I would like to work toward that standard. Cost and the time involved in getting these documents (you know the paperwork involved in a "Standard Requisition" ;-) ) means that I am working from hearsay, trade rags and Internet mailing lists. Rusty. _____________________________________________________________________ Rusty Rowell (rr226) Voice: (203) 285-6513 ABB Information Management Services ABB MEMO: USIMS.IMSRURO 100 Lamberton Rd (LA01) ABB VMS/Mail: WIN1::RUSTY Windsor, CT 06095-0500 Internet: rusty@win1.ims.abb.com
lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) (01/16/91)
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..)
wrl@wdl51.wdl.fac.com (Bill Lewandowski) (01/16/91)
Last year while I was in the DC area, I stopped by OMNICOM to pick up some of our Blue Books that had just "Floated In" (I.E. Slow Boat from Europe). I asked them about the chances of these standards comming out in PostScript or another common format (I'd take TROFF if it was available). They said don't hold your breath for it in the next 5 years or so. It seems that this has been discussed by the different groups of Standards Bodies can not agree on what standard to publish them in. I had gotten a Draft ISO to review and it was in PostScript but there are no plans (as of last june) to let people FTP or FTAM the standards. Things might have changed since last June but since we are still waioting for the 1988 Blue Books still (some are still not published) I'm not holding my breath. -- Bill Lewandowski LORAL Western Development Labs (408) 473-4362 Internet: wrl@wdl1.wdl.loral.com FAX: (408) 473-7926 UUCP: wdl1!wrl
csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) (01/17/91)
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>
lan_csse@netrix.nac.dec.com (CSSE LAN Test Account) (01/17/91)
In article <9101150148.AA22136@uc.msc.edu> rusty@WIN1.IMS.ABB.COM ("Rusty Rowell") writes: >> ... Is the high cost of standards >> impeding efforts to adopt those standards? Do you know less about OSI >> because you can't readily (cheaply) obtain standards specifications? > >Indirectly. I am frequently annoyed by the fact that I can't get these >documents electronically as the TCP/IP RFC's. ... >I am working from hearsay, trade rags and Internet mailing lists. I'll second that. In addition, I'd like to point out the real value in being able to use tools like grep on the RFCs; this is impossible with the OSI documents. Since they rarely have a very useful index, you sort of have to just know where to find something, or do a linear search. One problem I've had recently is that I'm trying to locate all the places where numeric ASN.1 values are defined. You know, things like: #define INTID 0x02 /* integer */ and #define IPID 0x40 /* IpAddress */ These are easy to find in our .h files, but I'd like to know where the authors found them, what other values may be officially defined, etc. I think I found the above INTID, but I'm still looking for the place that says that 0x40 is the code for an IP address, as well as just exactly what bytes may follow this code. (E.g., is it legal for an IP address to be, say, 3 or 6 bytes long? And what's the code that says that a DECnet address follows?) It'd be pretty easy to answer such questions if I could run a program to chew up the documents and spit out interesting portions. We're now well into the age of electronic text-processing; when is ISO going to join the rest of the world? (At least for networking standards? ;-)
craig@sics.se (Craig Partridge) (01/17/91)
By the way, there's been some thought within SIGCOMM about trying to list how to get the DP and DS documents (i.e. listing the editors and their e-mail addresses) in the regular Status of Standards section of Computer Communication Review. Would people consider this a useful service? Craig Partridge Editor, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
fwc@FLUKY.MITRE.ORG (Forrest W. Colliver) (01/22/91)
I would like to echo the sentiment expressed in the enclosed note. I find the contrast between the ready availability of the DARPA Internet standards and the difficulty of requisition of the ISO/ANSI OSI standards to be a significant impediment to my efforts to advance OSI development in my community of interest (i.e., civil aviation data networks). I would support any mechanism whereby OSI documents were available by anonymous ftp for widespread dissemination. Forrest Colliver (703)883-7271 The MITRE Corporation 'colliver@mitre.org' McLean, Virginia ------- Forwarded Message >> >> ... Is the high cost of standards >> impeding efforts to adopt those standards? Do you know less about OSI >> because you can't readily (cheaply) obtain standards specifications? > Indirectly. I am frequently annoyed by the fact that I can't get these > documents electronically as the TCP/IP RFC's. In trying to create an > intelligent design for a network, I would like to see what the OSI > standard will be in the future. I would like to work toward that > standard. Cost and the time involved in getting these documents (you > know the paperwork involved in a "Standard Requisition" ;-) ) means that > I am working from hearsay, trade rags and Internet mailing lists. ------- End of Forwarded Message
Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU (Einar Stefferud) (01/22/91)
I think it is entirely clear at this point how INTERNET folk feel aobut the high cost of paper only ISO/CCITT/ETC standards, adn the desire to see a change in the method of publication. I think that the real question now is more of "What is a way to work out an alternative that meets what we clearly percieve as a critical need?" I don't think that continued simple lamenting will get us what we want. Cheers...\Stef