>
> I don't think it's quite fair to say that they cost nothing to produce.
> I imagine entities like IEEE have drones that sit in an office somewhere
> and answer phones, copy things, type things up, etc. They've probably
> got rent, utilities, travel budgets, etc.
What they do is have a group of industry volunteers who set on a particular
committee and formulate standards for that particular item at the financial
expense of the person or group sponsoring that committee member and at no
cost to the IEEE. This is very similar to any of the Linux groups say samba
that formulate and defines samba. The only difference is that most often the
IEEE people do not use computers to do this except for the computer society
which charges outratiosly prices (3 to 4 times what other societies charge)
for their standards.
> They may or may not charge a fortune for their reports, depending on
> your viewpoint. But unlike us, they have real offices, real employees,
> and real expenses.
IEEE has real offices and real expenses as an organization but the IEEE as an
organization does not formulate the standards. The IEEE is an umbrella group
that is actually the administrative arm of dozens of smaller groups each
responsible for a particular item like xwindows, samba , gnome, KDE, etc. All
being members in an overall umbrella group.
The IEEE encounters absolute zero expenses in formulating the standards.
The only expense the IEEE has for the standards is the cost of a server.
> Could they have created the same standards gratis, as
> the Open Source world does?
The point is that is the exact method used.
> Maybe. But somewhere somebody's got to foot
> the bill. The internet wouldn't be what it is today without the
> original generosity of universities.
True but that does not mean that if there was an umbrella linux organization
that it would cost that organization anything.
For the IEEE standards especially the older ones most often the expense was
born by major industry players. Some of these standards were first formed in
the 1930's and they are still 90% the exact same wording. Note the ones
formulated in the 1930's were not computer type but the action demonstrates
the greed.
> All organized Open Source
> activities at one time or another require cash to operate, even Debian.
> And those standards folks live in a different (corporate) world from us,
> where if it's free or cheap, it's bad.
>
> Look at it this way: the Tampa Bay PC Users Group charges dues. We
> don't. They also have an office in Clearwater, and we don't. Red Hat
> pays Alan Cox's salary, and Transmeta pays Linus's. Yes, it's amazing
> what we've done with a lot of volunteer geeks. The standards guys just
> chose a different path. And if you were IBM or Nabisco, you wouldn't
> blink at spending the money for copies of standards.
>
> Paul
The IEEE charges a membership fee of a minimum $125 a year as a basic member
and there are 400,000 members. For the ASME (mechanical) there are nearly
600,000 members, and for the civil side approximately 200,000 members. The
electrical, mechanical, and civil were in the same office and used the same
staff in NYC for nearly 50 years.
Each has 3 levels of membership each charging progressively higher fees. But a
basic membership doesn't do you any good. You have to join a society like
computers, gas and oil, power (generation), etc. this add another fee to your
yearly bill. They also have a special store - one of the original mail order
stores - for technical books whose price are retail with a 10% membership
discount. Even though there were all in the same building and utilized much
of the same staff members can not nor have they ever been able to order from
the other disciplines. Acquisition of standards is not covered by membership
dues.
A little math here says that 1.2 M x and average membership fee of $170 = a
big pile of money plus what they obtain from the stores plus what they obtain
from standards and other enterprises and we are beginning to talk about a
major company revenues.
Believe it or not electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering were the
cutting edge of society at the beginning decade of the 20th century just like
computers are today at the beginning of the 21 century. It is just amazing
how they have stagnated in there social thought and action.
Frank
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