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From: "Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>
Subject: Re: ANSI C and POSIX
Date: 1996/04/17
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Date: 1996-04-17T00:00:00+00:00
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Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> "You still have to buy them from the IEEE.  They are reluctant to
> give them away because document sales pay for a significant
> portion of IEEE's support for standards."
> 
> To me, this is a terrible way to deal with standards. It is very important
> to make standards freely available if they are to have maximum impact.
> This can certainly be achieved, as has been demonstrated by the Ada 95
> ANSI/ISO standard, which is available freely from the net, and can be
> copied by anyone without charge.

That is quite clear. Unfortunately IEEE, ANSI, and ISO are creatures 
of an earlier time; a time when people generally didn't have internet
access and cheap access to laser printers. In the seventies and
eighties you were going to need to pay SOMEONE to print and bind the
document for you anyway, so why not tack on a few extra bucks to 
subsidize the process that created the standard in the first place?

Unfortunately the standards committes became dependent on this type
of funding. Now that times have changed, they have a tough time 
adjusting. In practice what you will find is late DRAFT versions of
the standards posted on the internet. This is commendable, but 
inadaquate.

Ironicly, MIL and DOD standards don't seem to have this problem, and 
can be found posted all over the internet. This is ironic because the
DoD is trying to move away from MIL standards toward the industry 
standards.

(sigh) What'cha gonna' do?

-- 
T.E.D.          
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