On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Doug Ewell wrote: > Sadly, this is absolutely typical for national and > international standards. Governments don't tend to subsidize standards > bodies, which require significant amounts of time to analyze, discuss, > and codify standards. Since these activities are not subsidized, the > user of the finished product must pay the price of R&D.
It may be interesting to know that this subside is there for Iranian standards. One can buy a copy of a 40 page one with something like 0.50 USD. This is specially important for very small businesses, as our standards sometimes even go to the details of production of some goods in the informational parts. Unfortunately, the quality has dropped in the 90s, and in case of IT standards, they have become just tranlations of ISO ones, sometimes even without appropriate localization. roozbeh
