Re: Openness (Re: UTF-16)

[John Day <day at bbn.com>]

At 11:40 -0400 9/14/99, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
>On Tue, 14 Sep 1999 01:31:24 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand said:
>> We gave up on "open" having to mean "free" a *very* long time ago.
>> We've even given up on "online" meaning "free" - see ITU.

The real problem of the cost of standards is that ITU and ISO are still
stuck in an early 20th C mode which perceived standards as a premium item.
A company only needed to have one or two copies of any standard in the
corporate library for someone to be able to refer to infrequently to ensure
that the latest molds for screw threads met the standard.  Even for
telephone equipment there was not much demand for the kind of frequent
reference the development current systems require.

Both ITU and ISO have failed to understand that standards of this ilk are
*commodity* items and that they would make far more money by charging far
less for them.  IEEE figured this out.  You can buy IEEE standards at more
or less text book prices and have a nice bound book on your shelf you can
refer to.  Well within reason.  But to charge $100 or more for a xerox copy
is ludicrous.  We tried to make this argument to them 15 years ago but they
were just too dense to get it.  There are still areas of standardization
(not in anything having to do with our industry) where standards are still
premium product and perhaps should be treated that way.  But ITU and ISO
could probably make up the difference by greatly lowering their price and
selling far more copies.

Worse, they don't understand marketing.  A couple of years ago, an ITU
person asked me if I thought $1000 for all ITU recommendations on CD was
reasonable.  I told him that I thought companies might by one.  However, if
you put all ISDN or ATM or whatever on CD and charged $50.  You would sell
thousands.  (Not that *I* would buy them!)  Needless to say, they didn't do
it.

Basically, I don't necessarily see charging for a copy of the standard to
be a barrier to openness. However, the kinds of prices ISO and ITU charge
reflect a different time and a different midset to what would make sense
today.

But then that is also what you expect.