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I think of the documentation costs that you're talking about to be a kind of
"tax." First of all, the big companies that usually need them can afford it.
Second, there is some overhead for maintaining these documents. You've got to
have people come together, deal with really technical things, standardize at
some point, enforce the standardization, make revisions to the
standard...look at COBOL or SQL as examples...COBOL is more "standard" though
there are extensions to the language, and SQL has a standard spec that almost
no one follows completely. Third, there's the standards organization itself:
someone's got to pay salaries, they've got to have a building, etc...And they
do standards for all kinds of things. They're independent on purpose, since
standards can be really tricky things: look at what's going on with RedHat
vs. "the rest of the linux distribution world" Would you trust RedHat to be
the standard bearer? (a little pun there... :-) Or maybe that's "United
Linux" vs. "the rest of the linux distribution world" vs. RedHat? Who gets to
make the standard? Well, it should be the people in the building where the
committee meets. The members may be made up of various vendors, but they have
an equal influence (in theory, anyway) when they're away from their
respective companies. Fourth, if a company that created the standard goes
away, it's still a standard kept by this organization.
Meanwhile, what's impressive about Linux is that they can do all this stuff
without the tremendous overhead. But still, the question of who is actually
paying for this stuff is a good one: how does www.debian.org stay online?
Who's paying for that? We've seen what happens when a major company goes
under that is supporting a major site: sourceforge.net, supported by that
linux hardware company...what's their name? They don't do that anymore, and
we're not quite sure what they are doing now. There is beginning to be
overhead for what the Linux community is doing, before it was absorbed by
individuals, but now we're seeing what happens when the scale increases. The
standards organizations are big, and deal with things on a large scale. The
Linux world may follow that trend....or not....we'll have to see.
Russell
On Thursday 29 August 2002 21:55 pm, you wrote:
> I know this is not Linux so I shouldn't posting this to the technical list
> so my apologies in advance.
>
> My awaking with the attitude of the IEEE started me thinking about how many
> other professional public service organizations create standards the same
> way Linux does at zero cost to themself; posts them to the net so their
> cost of distribution is virtually zero, and then charge $30 to $200 dollars
> for access to a report which is probable not even 30 pages long.
>
> People like AMA, ADA, ASME, CPA Society immediately come to mind just to
> name a few.
>
> What I guess I am saying folks is I just realized how profoundly
> revolutionary Linux and the open source computer revolution is in relation
> to traditional professional organizations and the immense shack up that
> these organizations are going to experience when professionals realized
> that one may technically (not legally) obtain a copy of a reports, scan it,
> and distribute it at virtually no cost.
>
> Thinking as a traditional professional the implications of the open source
> revolution just plainly boggle the mind.
>
> Thanks
> Frank
>
> On Thursday 29 August 2002 17:01, Frank Roberts - SOTL wrote:
> > Well I just had another go around with the IEEE standards website and if
> > you thought I was incensed before with their cost you would be amazed as
> > to what I think of them now.
> >
> > Get this you can purchase each standard in paper for $70 to $200 each
> > price depending on the standard and keep it for eternity. Cost to IEEE is
> > publishing price at printers.
> > You can down load it in PDF format for the same price ($70 to $200) for a
> > 1 year license for 1 person but you may only keep the software version
> > for as long as you have a license - at the end of the license year you
> > need a new license another $70 to $200 each. Cost to IEEE for this
> > service same a the cost to run any web server.
> >
> > Boy, And I thought Microsoft was bad.
> > According to this MS is a group of armatures.
> >
> > Frank
> >
> > On Thursday 29 August 2002 12:02, Ian C. Blenke wrote:
> > > OpenSource promotes innovation. Fortunately, innovative OpenSource
> > > solutions that define their own standards where none currently exist
> > > often spark an interest in the industry toward accepting the OpenSource
> > > solution as a standard. Likewise, OpenSource solutions are often "proof
> > > of concept" reference implementations of standards approved by
> > > standards bodies. If you see an IETF draft whitepaper, there's a good
> > > bet that someone has some OpenSource skeleton somewhere that implements
> > > that protocol idea.
> > >
> > > Standards bodies typically work to gain industry acceptance of unified
> > > technologies through extensive committees and political bargaining. How
> > > else would ATM cells have 48 byte payloads? Patented technologies are
> > > often woven into standards insuring the prosperity of member companies.
> > > One merely needs to look at RAMBUS to see what evil things they did to
> > > JEDEC.
> > >
> > > Sometimes, standards bodies are started purely out of necessity. My
> > > previous employer found themselves working with various ATM equipment
> > > vendors trying to get VoATM (Voice over ATM) working with SVC speech
> > > bearer channels, only to find that the ATM standards were woefully
> > > inadequate and vague. We fought to establish "The Alta Group" to
> > > further the "Alta Spec" to clarify the specifics regarding SVC bearer
> > > VoATM and other associated issues.
> > >
> > > One of the results of this, however, was our need to subscribe to a
> > > number of standards organizations to have full run of ITU-T, Bellcore,
> > > IETF, IEEE, and other specs as we needed them to enforce vendor
> > > compliance. It's rather amazing what vendors try to get away with if
> > > you don't corner them with a standards spec and get them to admit the
> > > error in their ways.
> > >
> > > Solid Engineering practices depend on a solid foundation of standards
> > > specs to really develop solutions to problems correctly.
> > >
> > > Sadly, looking at Freshmeat or Sourceforge, Opensource projects are
> > > more often than not developed at the whim of the author for a specific
> > > purpose that either benefit few others or are written so narrowly as to
> > > avoid the real engineering problems that would otherwise need to be
> > > addressed.
> > >
> > > Yes, OpenSource is innnovation, but the hard work of compatibility,
> > > interoperability, and integration testing for larger systems just seems
> > > to be the last thing on most OpenSource developers minds. OpenSource is
> > > usually developed on top of standards, with an eye toward defining new
> > > standards often at the expense of legacy software platforms.
> > >
> > > Coders like to "rewrite" things. Developers like to "reuse" things. I
> > > honestly believe that most OpenSource is written by youthful coders and
> > > not developers.
> > >
> > > - Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net> <ian@blenke.com>
> > > http://ian.blenke.com
> > >
> > > On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 09:17, Frank Roberts - SOTL wrote:
> > > > Hi All:
> > > >
> > > > I know that this has nothing to do with Linux as such but then again
> > > > it sure does make one appreciate Linux.
> > > >
> > > > Back when I was studying electrical engineering computers hardware
> > > > and software were part of circuits. Computers were composed of
> > > > discrete components and programed in assembly language. Standards for
> > > > all electrical apparatus including computers was and still is
> > > > maintained by the IEEE.
> > > >
> > > > I just attempted to purchase a set of standards from the IEEE.
> > > >
> > > > Full set one person $4000.
> > > > Industry specific group (approximately 10% of total) $1500.
> > > > Individual standards $60 to $600 each.
> > > >
> > > > Now one must realize the IEEE cost of the standards is the same as
> > > > the Linus comunity cost of "How to" documents and "Man Pages" and
> > > > have the same relation to other electrical devices as these do to
> > > > Linux. As far as cost what ever cost that was incurred was bore by
> > > > the individuals composing the standards not the organization.
> > > >
> > > > With cost like this for basic services one can only wonder why one
> > > > should maintain a membership.
> > > >
> > > > Frank
- --
Linux -- the OS for the Renaissance Man
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