Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!haddock!news
From: news@haddock.ima.isc.com (overhead)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: copyright
Message-ID: <15930@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 12 Feb 90 21:06:50 GMT
References: <3109@paperboy.OSF.ORG> <1091@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> <1938@pbhyg.PacBell.COM> <1990Feb9.192505.26290@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: jimm@ima.ima.isc.com (Jim McGrath)
Organization: Interactive Systems Co
Lines: 21

In article <1990Feb9.192505.26290@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In practice, ISO seems to be exactly like all the other standards outfits:
>the revenue from sales of high-priced documents is significant and they're
>not prepared to give it up.  ISO does not have magic sources of funding
>that eliminate all financial worries.
This seems to be rather circular reasoning. i.e. ISO exists to produce
expensive documents to pay for its existence.  If there is some need
for ISO beyond that perceived by ISO itself, the market place will pay
for it.  GM for a while saw a need for the ISO based MAP protocols,
and invested in their definition and implementation.

It appears to be much easier for a government, or corporation to
specify the ISO protocols when they don't have to pay for their
development, and easier to back away from an implementation that is
too slow or cumbersome when little money is invested up front.  What
I'm trying to say here is that the people who want ISO implementations
(end users) should pay for the standards developments, not the
potential implementers.  If funding cannot be found for this, it would
imply to me that the ISO standards effort has no value. 

Jim