George and others: Perhaps the answer can be found in the fact that I just issued our annual company purchase order for ETSI membership in the amount of $11,000. It might be no wonder the ETSI standards are available for free on the internet and others are not. That having been said, I think a case could be made for your proposal if the number of standards organizations charging for access could be routed through a (choke) for profit clearing house which would collect one subscription fee and partition it out to the standards bodies as required by their agreements with those bodies. Any experts out there looking for a business to get rich in? I would find paying one annual subscription fee more desirable than spending hours per year writing multiple purchase orders for paper that must then be stored and made accessible without risk of them wandering off. We have to store our standards in our company library far removed from the workers in order to prevent wander loss. I would think that unlimited access to all standards for a single fee would be justifiable since the only thing delivered with each access is a lot of those imaginary and short lived things called bits on a wire.
Jim Allan Senior Compliance Engineer Milgo Solutions Inc. E-mail [email protected] > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [SMTP:[email protected]] > Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 10:18 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Multi-Standards Haze > > > Most of the world entered the information some decades ago. The > greatest leap forward has been the advent of the internet. I need not > elaborate on how quickly one can get information on almost any topic at > their workstation via the internet. > > Sadly, the world of standards is stuck in the 1950's. Months or years > go by to get consensus on new versions. Those who need them most must > place "orders" for precious hard copies of new standards at exhorbitant > prices. > > I can see why commercial books will always cost something, as they > represent > creative intellectual property that are made available by the the author/ > publisher for profit. However, why would international standards bodies, > which are not for profit, make it so difficult and expensive to acquire > documents that make products safer for everyone? > > Imagine a world where...... > > - Every user of standards had a PC workstation > - There was a world-wide internet to distribute information > - International standards bodies maintained a website of standards > - All standards contained hyper-links to related standards > - Subscription to access these standards was free > - Or, each subscriber (manufacturer) paid a modest fee per year for > access > > > Well, we are part way there...... > > > George Alspaugh > Lexmark International Inc. > > > > --------- > This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. > To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] > with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the > quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], > [email protected], [email protected], or > [email protected] (the list administrators). > --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
