As an ex-Chairman of a standards committee (ETSI TE4) and a long time standards activist, I must commend Kevin on his response. He covered the main reasons why you will now find many Normative* and Informative* references to other standards and recommendations within a given standard (e.g. EN 60 950). The main aim of any standardisation process is to minimise duplication of both requirements and effort. I can assure you that the aim of the majority of experts involved in the production and maintenance of a standard, is not to produce a document that would require almost permanent review and updating. The main criticism of the Standards making process has been that it takes to long to produce the standards Industry needs, it takes long enough for new standards to make it through the various levels of committee and public enquiry and voting without adding further burden to unnecessary amendments.
Imagine that a Standards committee copied the entire section of one standard(x) into standard(y) that they were producing: - This would mean each time standard(x) was amended, the rapporteur (the person tasked with responsibility for the text) of standard(y) having to review the changes in standard(x) (which he/she might not be an expert in) and decide whether the text included in standard(y) also required amendment. This would mean that standards would unnecessarily and quickly become out of sync with each other, which would make life as an engineer - interpreting the requirements - even harder. There are many factors that have influenced the policies of the Standards Bodies and I hope this and Kevin's email have not confused (or annoyed) you further. ETSI standards by the way are funded by its members and in some instances by the European Commission, these are available for FREE from their website! http://webapp.etsi.org/publicationssearch * A Normative Reference is generally a reference to a requirement which must be complied with in another standard and also means that it must be publicly available (and in the ETSI context free from IPR that would prevent manufacturers implementing the standard). An Informative Reference however is generally to a standard where either no mandatory requirements have been imposed or that it is not within the public domain at that time. Edward Fitzgerald Director Direct Tel. : +44 1202 20 09 22 GSM Tel. : +44 4685 33 100 European Technology Services (EMEA) Specialist Global Compliance and Regulatory Consultancy Regional Offices in Australia, Canada and the UK. http://www.ets-tele.com -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Richardson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 29 September 1999 04:24 To: Nick Williams Cc: [unknown] Subject: Re: IEC 60990 Vs IEC 60950 Thread not included for the sake of everyone's precious bandwidth! --------- 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).
