Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Subject: Re: FTP defn of SGML Message-ID: Date: 30 Sep 90 21:23:36 GMT References: <1990Sep24.174222.22487@terminator.cc.umich.edu> <1990Sep30.024100.9645@cbnewsi.att.com> Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Organization: The World Lines: 53 In-Reply-To: hrs1@cbnewsi.att.com's message of 30 Sep 90 02:41:00 GMT >> How much can they possibly be making on reprints of this stuff? This >> ain't exactly NY Times booklist stuff. >> > >The aim is not to make money, it is just to cover the cost of production and >distribution. > >Herman Silbiger I did not mean to imply that they were profitting off this activity (or, better put, "I did not mean to imply that they were not profitting..."), I was asking whether they really could be covering any significant costs in this manner. I suppose one could always argue that they're at least losing less. But simply producing and shipping paper copies tends to have a high overhead, particularly the labor involved (it takes real staff to track something down, make copies, pack, mail etc.) It's not hard to come out net negative merely on the activity of selling copies of documents. Or, perhaps, only cover the cost of distributing the copies. If that's the case, then why not just distribute it electronically and get rid of most of the overhead? And electronic copies don't eliminate sales, they might drive them in other directions. For example, Unix manuals have been on-line since the beginning of Unix, yet I don't think anyone doubts there's a brisk business in paper Unix documentation. USENIX alone has sold, I dunno, hundreds if not thousands of BSD Unix manuals (basically just hard copy of what's on-line) over the years, mostly to people who also had access to exactly the same thing on-line. It's not an either/or proposition. What happens is that availability of the documents on-line gets people using the information, exploring it. It widens the audience vastly when, eg, every CS dept has an electronic copy of (say) OSI docs. Right now I bet very few people in CS depts in the US have ever even seen one of these documents, let alone come to depend on them as a reference base. I know in the 10 years I spent at Boston University I never saw one around. What I have I had to hunt down and order (and yes, had to work hard to learn what to even ask for!) I think the standards organizations are being foolish on this point. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD