Subject: RE: Openness (Re: UTF-16)

From: "Oksala, Stephen P" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 15:18:19 -0400

The real problem is that ISO (and ANSI, and most other long-standing US
standards developers such as IEEE or ASTM) need to have money to pay the
staff, the electric bill, the rent, etc.  A substantial portion of that (as
high as 90% in the case of some organizations) comes from the profits on
document sales.  So while there has been strong pressure on ANSI and ISO
from IT folks for a number of years, nobody has demonstrated an alternative
source of funding.  In fact the participants were by and large outraged at
the imposition of fees on the order of $300 - they considered that their
time and energy was sufficient.  Companies, who used to provide the bulk of
the money, are increasingly unwilling to fund anything other than the basic
work; not that they believe it's unnecessary, but because they know they can
refuse to pay and still get the benefits.

As to low prices, higher volume and net gain - evidence with NCITS and the
US adoption of the ISO C++ standard is encouraging.  ($18 for an online
copy, as opposed to ISO's $200+ for paper)  But until the finance guys in
the standards organizations are convinced that they can survive, this will
be a rough road.  (And complicated - the copyright and royalty discussions
that take place depending on where the original work comes from are not for
the simpleminded.)  So the issue is not "free" standards, it's how to pay
for the organizations.  

Steve Oksala

Stephen P. Oksala
Director, Standards Management
Unisys
2076 Swedesford Road, MS B203H
Malvern, PA 19355
Phone: 610-648-2050
Fax: 610-695-4700
Email: [email-masked]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Day [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 1:26 PM
To: [email-masked]; Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Openness (Re: UTF-16)

At 11:40 -0400 9/14/99, [email-masked] wrote:
>On Tue, 14 Sep 1999 01:31:24 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand said:
>> We gave up on "open" having to mean "free" a *very* long time ago.
>> We've even given up on "online" meaning "free" - see ITU.

The real problem of the cost of standards is that ITU and ISO are still
stuck in an early 20th C mode which perceived standards as a premium item.
A company only needed to have one or two copies of any standard in the
corporate library for someone to be able to refer to infrequently to ensure
that the latest molds for screw threads met the standard.  Even for
telephone equipment there was not much demand for the kind of frequent
reference the development current systems require.

Both ITU and ISO have failed to understand that standards of this ilk are
*commodity* items and that they would make far more money by charging far
less for them.  IEEE figured this out.  You can buy IEEE standards at more
or less text book prices and have a nice bound book on your shelf you can
refer to.  Well within reason.  But to charge $100 or more for a xerox copy
is ludicrous.  We tried to make this argument to them 15 years ago but they
were just too dense to get it.  There are still areas of standardization
(not in anything having to do with our industry) where standards are still
premium product and perhaps should be treated that way.  But ITU and ISO
could probably make up the difference by greatly lowering their price and
selling far more copies.

Worse, they don't understand marketing.  A couple of years ago, an ITU
person asked me if I thought $1000 for all ITU recommendations on CD was
reasonable.  I told him that I thought companies might by one.  However, if
you put all ISDN or ATM or whatever on CD and charged $50.  You would sell
thousands.  (Not that *I* would buy them!)  Needless to say, they didn't do
it.

Basically, I don't necessarily see charging for a copy of the standard to
be a barrier to openness. However, the kinds of prices ISO and ITU charge
reflect a different time and a different midset to what would make sense
today.

But then that is also what you expect.

---

From: Peter Furniss <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:03:10 +0100

Valdis [email-masked] sent :

> I think if RFC2026 is ever overhauled, section 7.1.1 needs some more
> text regarding what to do if normative reference is made to an external
> standard that may in some way become broken over time.  Possible solutions
> include requiring citing specific releases/modifications/versions,
> or requiring a discussion of what to do if a moving-target standard
> such as 3166 or one of the charset standards ecomes broken.

If a reference to an ISO standard / ITU-T recommendation is complete,
it should include year of publication (for IS0 - year of approval for
ITU-T), and any amendments ought to be a separately referenced
document. Giving the year will "fix" the normative reference against
subsequent amendments that might change things. There might be
corrigenda (minor corrections of defects - corrigenda aren't supposed
to add functionality), though it's arguable whether they change the
standard automatically.

Even ISO doesn't expect the revisions to be applied automatically by
referencing documents. The boiler-plate for the clause in ISO standards
that references other standards includes:

"At the time of publication, the editions indicated were valid. All
Recommendations and Standards are subject to revision, and parties to
agreements based on this Recommendation | International Standard are
encouraged to investigate the possibility of applying the most recent
edition of the Recommendations and Standards listed below. "
 
(that's actually from a common-text ITU-T Recommendations | ISO/IEC
standard, though the pure ISO text is similar. As an extra confusion,
these common-text documents have two dates - ITU-T uses year of
approval, ISO year of publication -which are often different -
hopefully only by one)

Standards that are highly dynamic, like ISO 3166, typically have a
maintenance agency (DIN, the German standards body for 3166) which is
responsible for the changes. It seem unlikely that an RFC would want to
"fix" its reference to something like that to a particular date, or
have some IETF (IANA ?) ratification process.. 

Peter Furniss
OSI Maintenance Rapporteur

--------------------------------------
Peter Furniss Consultants
58 Alexandra Crescent, Bromley, Kent BR1 4EX, UK
Phone & fax : +44 (0)181 313 1833 (or 0181 460 8553 if busy)
Email           : [email-masked].
Maintenance website: http://www.furniss.co.uk/maint

Statements above cannot be taken as an authoritative interpretation of
any International Standard. Only approved amendments and the like are
official interpretations. I do my best, but anyone can be rong.

---

From: Peter Furniss <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:03:10 +0100

Peter Furniss

---

From: Scott Cadzow <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 14:10:56 -0000

Moest european standards bodies in "our2 industry are oen and free in this
respect. ECMA offers all its publication (www.ecma.ch) as does ETSI
(www.etsi.org). Many of the publications from these bodies are endorsements
of ITU and/or ISO standards.

Regards,

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Furniss [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: 15 September 1999 01:03
To: [email-masked]'
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: Openness (Re: UTF-16) 

 

Peter Furniss

---

From: Scott Cadzow <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 14:10:56 -0000

Regards,

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Furniss [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: 15 September 1999 01:03
To: [email-masked]'
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: Openness (Re: UTF-16) 

 

Peter Furniss