David They have and continue to do so. I know that they have had some success on the health care side of X12.
Can you shed some light on what ANSI receives money to do and from which agency? Doug -----Original Message----- From: David Frenkel [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:44 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EDI-L] EDIFACT vs. X12, public/free vs. nonpublic/expensive Doug, I would be curious if you know why DISA/X12 does not lobby the federal government for funding beyond memberships from various federal agencies. ANSI does receive federal money for a variety of its other efforts. Thanks. David Frenkel 612-237-1966 ________________________________ From: Doug Anderson < [email protected] <mailto:Doug_Anderson%40kleinschmidt.com> > To: [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> Sent: Wed, October 13, 2010 1:17:08 PM Subject: RE: [EDI-L] EDIFACT vs. X12, public/free vs. nonpublic/expensive Earl Let me try to correct some of your misstatements. DISA has moved a number of times since 2004 and continues to lower their rent expense as well as other overhead expenses. Staff has been reduced. Indeed, it might be a surprise to you, but some DISA staff members do work at home. No, the table data is NOT collected and maintained by volunteers. It is collected and maintained by DISA. There is advertising on the X12 Web site. I'll avoid the never ending discussion on why X12 standards aren't free so I can make money. Doug -----Original Message----- From: Earl Wertheimer [mailto: [email protected] <mailto:earlw%40spe-edi.com> ] Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:54 PM To: Leah Halpin; [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: [EDI-L] EDIFACT vs. X12, public/free vs. nonpublic/expensive Leah > I've been reading through this chain and I did see a suggestion, possibly facetious, that all paid staff (or at least the president/chair) take a pay cut. I'm assuming you're amongst the unpaid. I was not being facetious. In these days of Open Source software and Internet availability, does a President making over $200,000 per year make sense? I work with other organizations, and nobody is making that kind of money. Even their rent could be reduced. Meetings can be virtual, offices can be home- based. (They reduced their occupancy expenses from $457,000 to $132,000 when they moved in around 2003) > What I haven't seen is mention that almost no single "user" pays for the table data. Rather, those putting skin in the game in order to create a product which they, in turn, plan to sell, which uses the table data, pay for it. Of course, they will pass on some portion of this to each of their customers. This is not a surprising or abnormal business model. The table data is collected and maintained by volunteers. Actually by companies that volunteer their staff, or individuals that are interested in helping out. This is not a product that is manufactured. It is a standard that can be used to facilitate the exchange of data. All the Internet standards are published as free RFC's. Why should the X12 standard be different than the HTML, email or AS2 standard? The translators and databases are the products and I have no problem with companies charging what they can for their products. Instead, you have a "non-profit" with a huge overhead. Cut the overhead and you can give away the standards. Charge for advertising on the DISA page. How much is a copy of Gentran or one of those other 'big' EDI packages? I'm sure Sterling or IBM or GXS would be happy to pay for advertising on the DISA site. > Patrice is somewhat unique in that he has been trying, for some time, to reinvent the wheel and make it "free". It's possible he may succeed, as did Linus Torvalds, however, it's the Red Hat guys who made the money and whose OS is used by "professional/business" systems. Linus, I'm sure, sleeps peacefully and well, no pager for him ;) He can't make it 'free' as long as the X12 standard is expensive or tied up by copyright. Linux is free because all the components were Open Source, and also free. Fedora is free, but the Red Hat support is not. Ubuntu is free, but the optional support is not. Why can't the X12 standard be free and the various companies (including myself) charge what they want for support? > CEOs, CIOs, CFOs (particularly) like a vendor they can count on and hold accountable. Free is suspect in the business community and for good reason. Java, Firefox, Apache, MySQL, HTML, Ubuntu are suspect? Vendors can be accountable because the Open Source components they use are non- proprietary and relatively easy to change. Executives who make their companies dependent on proprietary solutions are in a worse position than those who use Open Source solutions. ________________________________ From: Doug Anderson < [email protected] <mailto:Doug_Anderson%40kleinschmidt.com> <mailto:Doug_Anderson%40kleinschmidt.com> > To: Mike Rawlins < [email protected] <mailto:mcr2%40rawlinsecconsulting.com> <mailto:mcr2%40rawlinsecconsulting.com> >; [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> Sent: Wed, October 13, 2010 11:27:04 AM Subject: RE: [EDI-L] EDIFACT vs. X12, public/free vs. nonpublic/expensive Mike Yes, I agree, talking about how to fund X12's SDO operations is a great topic for the bar. I have said it on this list before when this topic has been discussed (and it has over and over and over), if you have a suggestion on how we should fund the development and maintenance of our X12 standards, please, please, send them to me. I will be glad to discuss your suggestion at the bar and if it sounds reasonable after a few drinks, take it to the Steering Committee as a formal proposal. But alas Mike, we never get any suggestions. We continue to complaints, but no offered suggestions. Doug Doug Anderson Chair, X12 Transportation Subcommittee Vice President Sales Support Kleinschmidt Inc. 847-405-7457 (Office direct) 847-826-3531 (cell) 847-945-4619 (fax) < http://www.kleinschmidt.com/ <http://www.kleinschmidt.com/> < http://www.kleinschmidt.com/ <http://www.kleinschmidt.com/> > > http://www.kleinschmidt.com <http://www.kleinschmidt.com> < http://www.kleinschmidt.com <http://www.kleinschmidt.com> > -----Original Message----- From: Mike Rawlins [mailto: [email protected] <mailto:mcr2%40rawlinsecconsulting.com> <mailto:mcr2%40rawlinsecconsulting.com> ] Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 11:52 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: [EDI-L] EDIFACT vs. X12, public/free vs. nonpublic/expensive Patrice, This question is raised periodically on this list. You may find other discussions in the archives. People who are new to the X12 standard find it difficult to understand why they can get W3C "standards", UN/EDIFACT, and so many others from the web, but can't get X12. In regard to your immediate questions, you *do* have full access to the X12 standard publications, but yes, for a price. You seem to confuse public (which implies use) with free, but from your comments it is obvious that your complaint is that the standards are not publicly posted on the Internet where anyone can download them without paying a fee. The short answer is that while the actual standards development in ASC X12 is done by volunteers supported by member organizations, an infrastructure (meaning staff and facilities) is also required. That infrastructure must be funded. When X12 was started over 25 years ago a common model for funding that infrastructure was to charge for the published standard, in addition to charging dues to member companies. It made sense. How else were you going to read the standard, other than from a book? And, people are quite accustomed to paying money for books, and big money for specialized reference books. >From a member company perspective it was (and still is) kind of counter intuitive - you take employees away from their regular work to develop standards, pay money to send them places, pay membership dues, then buy the published standard. All of this while anyone can use the standard without paying any licensing fees (some rare exceptions exist). Odd as it may seem, this model worked very well for many ANSI, ISO, and other groups for many years, at least until the web came along. In recent years other standards development organizations have developed different funding models that don't rely as much, or at all, on publications revenue. ASC X12 and DISA have not, but not for a lack of trying. I've been involved in several discussions in the X12 Steering Committee on this topic and share some of your frustration. Fully answering any questions about why X12 hasn't moved on is a discussion better left for the bar than this list, as I'm sure Mr. Anderson will attest. X12 is by no means the only organization that has not adopted a different funding model. For example, try finding the list of SCAC codes used in transportation. You will also find that there are still several ISO standards that are only available for a fee. There was a big flap a few years ago about an ISO proposal to charge fees for even using the standard country codes or some such nonsense. They backed off. This probably doesn't ease your frustration, but I hope it helps answer your questions. Mike BTW - The only X12 standards you really need for your parser are X12.5 and X12.6. I don't know if they are still available as single publications, but it's worth checking into. Industry and company implementation guides for individual transaction sets should be sufficient for the rest of what you're trying to do. -- ----------------------------------------- Michael C. Rawlins, Senior Software Engineer, Inovis (a GXS Company) Sent from personal account On 10/12/2010 3:58 PM, Patrice wrote: > Hi Guys, > > Just wanted to share my frustration... I am working on my X12 parser and I am wondering why I do not have FULL access to the X12 standard specifications :-( > > It's not publicly available :-( Even worse you have to pay, and it's EXPENSIVE :-( > > I am trying to find my way through publicly available implementation guidelines given partial information :-( > > WHY is not (1) PUBLIC and (2) FREE as EDIFACT? That's a pity! > > /Patrice > "EDI is not complex, and therefore should not be expensive." > Earl Wertheimer [email protected] <mailto:earlw%40spe-edi.com> <mailto:earlw%40spe-edi.com> http://www.spe-edi.com <http://www.spe-edi.com> < http://www.spe-edi.com <http://www.spe-edi.com> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! 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