Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!ima!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: a couple quickies / copyright
Message-ID: <14461@think.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 20:53:59 GMT
References: <11140@brl-adm.ARPA> <6967@brl-smoke.ARPA> <23133@rebel.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@sauron.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 26

In article <23133@rebel.UUCP> george@rebel.UUCP (George M. Sipe) writes:
>It is my understanding that the IEEE applies copyright protection to their
>standards as a means to prohibit people from changing the text without
>authorization.  I always believed that it was really done to generate
>revenue.  As for ANSI and ISO I have no idea what their policies are.

I'm not sure about ISO, but ANSI definitely copyrights all their
standards.  ANSI is almost nothing but a publishing house, which also
maintains the guidelines for the technical committees that actually
produce the standards.  Almost all of ANSI's revenue comes from
selling the final versions of standards (drafts are distributed by the
secretariat organization for the particular committee -- CBEMA is the
secretariat of X3, the TC on computers).  They have very little
interest in making it easy to get copies of standards through other
mechanisms, as it will just cut into their profits.

X3J13, the Common Lisp standardization committee, has been discussing
convincing them to release the standard.  Common Lisp has a built-in
DOCUMENTATION function, and many vendors would like to be able to use
the ANSI wording in their documentation.  It looks like it will be an
uphill battle.
Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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