Re: Standards - on the net or for sale?

[davea@linkmsd.com (David Arno)]

In article <INFO-ADA%95032012021548@VM1.NODAK.EDU>
           CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM  writes:

:     What does tend to gall me is when the _GOVERNMENT_ doesn't make
:     this stuff available on the Internet for free and easy access by
:     all of us who must use the standards they define. After all, we've
:     already paid for this stuff in the form of taxes, most of these
:     things would almost certainly be in machine readable form already
:     and it would save the government money by having industry pay to
:     murder all those trees to print out the standards as they need
:     them.
: 
:     Should we start lobbying Congress? I hear lots of Congressmen now
:     have Internet addresses...
: 

Interesting point, but don't forget that standards should idealy be
international not just american (usa) standards. It's rather unfair for the
rest of us to expect you Americans to pay for these standards to be free to
us all due to you paying for them through your taxes. Though by doing so,
Congress (or whoever) do encourage them to become international standards,
since they are free to the whole world. (a case in point, the computing world
would be in a complete mess if all non american computer companies had
to pay to use the ASCII character set).

-- 
David Arno