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From: carl@malamud.com (Carl Malamud)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: High Cost of OSIng?
Message-ID: <9101111905.1.UUL1.3#5653@malamud.com>
Date: 12 Jan 91 03:05:01 GMT
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Organization: The Internet
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The following message was posted on the IETF list.  The response
was (with one exception) to get rid of all copyright.  It occurred
to me that the sample might have been skewed.  Any reaction from
these other lists?

=============ORIGINAL MESSAGE STARTS HERE==========================

As you are all probably aware, ISO, CCITT, and ANSI all retain the 
copyright on their standards.  The result is that they cost quite a 
bit -- a recent  purchase of FTAM specs, for example, cost me $200.  
There are two reasons advanced by the standards bodies for this policy:

     1) They need to fund the standards process with document sales.
     2) Keeping copyright prevents unauthorized duplication and thus
        preserves the authenticity of the standards.

This is in sharp contrast to TCP/IP where standards are publicly available.

Does anyone consider this to be an issue?  Is the high cost of standards 
impeding efforts to adopt those standards?  Do you know less about OSI 
because you can't readily (cheaply) obtain standards specifications?

Carl
carl@malamud.com