Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!usenix!std-unix
From: khb@Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Are POSIX documents available for ftp from somewhere?
Message-ID: <456@usenix.ORG>
Date: 24 Aug 90 05:49:57 GMT
References: <445@usenix.ORG> <452@usenix.ORG>
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From:  khb@Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages)

In article <452@usenix.ORG> donn@hpfcrn.fc.hp.com (Donn Terry) writes:

...
   The IEEE does not allow general access to the machine readable of any
   of its standards.  The key reason is that there have actually been cases
   where someone gets it, modifies it slightly for their own benefit, and
   then prints it claiming it's the standard.  ...

Sounds like an excuse, not a reason. It would not be hard to publish
checksums. 

In the X3 world the reason is painfully clear, money. X3 relies on the
revenues generated by selling copies of the standard to finance its
operations (this information is a fallout of numerous arguments
between x3j3 members and x3; I cannot vouch that it is true, but it
was/is certainly the reason copies of the x3j3 draft are ftpable)
--
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Keith H. Bierman    kbierman@Eng.Sun.COM | khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM
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Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 56