HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Subject: ISO specs. 
Distribution: world
Organization: Peer Association
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 18:17:39 +0000


In article <23356A@erik.naggum.no> enag@ifi.uio.no writes:

>
>ISO standards are sold by and copyright ISO.  ISO has exercised their
>prerogative as copyright holders to not make them available for FTP.
>
>Best regards,
></Erik>

Yes, Erik, and this will have the natural effect of limiting the flow
of OSI information, knowledge and awareness etc. etc.  As a comms consultant
I need access to masses of essentially tutorial information to increase
my ongoing knowledge.  I do not write code nor "implement" standards.  
I develop comms & networking strategies for clients, mostly in the public 
sector.  I write procurement specs for big LANs (e.g. 1800 outlets), and 
advise on LAN & WAN protocols and the approach to be taken to integrate
complicated mixes on systems (VAXs, ICL VME, RS6000, big NetWare sites etc),
when we need to start considering FDDI, frame relay.  Applicability of X.25
networks, comparison of protocol services, network management etc.

Furthering my knowledge of OSI (particularly re network & transport layers)
for ISO 8473, 10589, 10747, 9542, 8208,  etc. etc.  EWOS functional
profiles etc etc.  has been a very difficult and costly excercise !!!!.  

The standard for NSAP allocation (BS 7306) cost me forty one UK pounds!!!
ISO 8348/Ad2 which defines NSAP structure cost me thirty two UK pounds!!!

At these prices, the full set of standards would run into many hundreds
of UK pounds.  And I repeat, many of us need these for tutorial and 
reference purposes.

Contrast this position with the freedom of access to RFCs....

From my PC in my office at home I can FTP onto Imperial College in London 
(src.doc.ic.ac.uk), download any RFC and have it printed in less time than 
it would take me to walk to my archive department (the garage).

Whilst this situation prevails, the quality of understanding, advice
technical knowledge and clear strategies will be higher for TC/IP
related issues than for OSI.

A quick test:  How many people knew very little about OSI (transport layer
               and network layer)  AND  TCP/IP  five years ago?

		How many of those now know a lot more about TCP/IP
		and still know very little about the equiv. OSI protocols?

Yes, the ISO's excercising of its copyright on standards is limiting the 
speed with which OSI protocols will be taken up by the user community.

The question is: does it matter?


--
Phil Royse   Comms Consultant, Purley   |  Mail brought to you by PCElm 3.01.
             Surrey   (+44)81 645-9868  |
From: ramu@cadsun.corp.mo (imn_)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Test Sequence Generator tools ?
Keywords: testing, protocol verification, conformance testing
Date: 21 Sep 92 21:01:38 GMT
Organization: Motorola, Inc., Software Research and Development, Rolling Meadows, IL. 60008


I'd appreciate pointers to public-domain or commercial tools that
generate test sequences from finite-state machine (FSM)
specifications. Such methods are typically used for conformance
testing.

Thanks,

--Ramu

Email: ramu@cadsun.corp.mot.com
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: craig@sics.se (Craig Partridge)
Subject: re: Catalogue of OSI and Related standards
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 17:36:13 GMT

> Hi, is there an ftp site that holds a list of OSI and related standards?
> ... and/or an on-line catalogue?

ACM SIGCOMM publishes a listing of the status of OSI standards in
Computer Communication Review about every 6 months.  I don't know that
there's a copy on-line right now, but I bet it could be arranged.

Craig Partridge
craig@bbn.com
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: neideck@nestvx.enet.dec.com (Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz)
Subject: Re: ODA/ODIF
Organization: CEC Karlsruhe
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 13:21:45 GMT

In article <Sep29.133020.27746@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> shafer@CS.ColoState.EDU (spencer shafer) writes:
>How close is ODA with DEC's CDA?

CDA is a conceptual superset of ODA, but the actual encoding and grammars
are different. So one could say that CDA is in the spirit of ODA (i.e.
it uses ASN.1) but with a lot of useful extensions (like images). The
layout model is slightly different.

		Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz

Multimedia Engineering, CEC Karlsruhe	   EERP Portfolio Manager
Software Motion Pictures		   Multimedia Base Technology
Digital Equipment Corporation
neidecker@nestvx.enet.dec.com
From: atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil (Randall Atkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Date: 27 Sep 92 21:49:27 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Naval Research Laboratory, DC


  Erik is confused.  Growth of IP continues to be exponential -- which
is why IP address space is such a concern.  I have no information on
ISO growth since I don't know anyone using ISO for real work.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: kong@mel.dit.csiro.au (Alan Kong)
Subject: WAIS
Organization: CSIRO DIT (Melb.)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 06:11:04 GMT


I am looking for discussion papers/documents on WAIS, could someone please point 
me the direction.

Thanks in advance.



Alan 
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: sp_pm@space.alcbel.be (Paul Moore)
Subject: Is there a free/public-domain ASN.1 compiler available?
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 14:27:15 +0100
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X-To: comp.protocols.iso.usenet

Hello,

I'm looking for a public-domain or some such freely available ASN.1
compiler. Does such a thing exist?

Please respond by email, as I don't have direct acces to the News.

Thanks, Paul

---
Paul Moore,                          email:sp_pm@space.alcbel.be
ALcatel Bell Telephone,
Space Department TS664,              phone: (+32) 3/829.5024
Berkenrodelei 33,
2660 Hoboken,
Belgium.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: peterd@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com (Peter Desnoyers)
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts
Distribution: world,local
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 13:19:30 GMT

jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) writes:

>In article <BvB1oM.M2r@cgl.ucsf.edu>, davidr@socrates.ucsf.edu (David Rivkin%Kollman) writes...
>>For me, the cost of purchasing all of the standards that I need would eat
>>up almost 2 years of my income (from fellowships) and I am trying to get my 
>>work done.  This makes FTP or even online library access to those docs.
>>a necessity.  but that does not exist.  So no work gets done.

>That sounds extremely bogus to me.  Unless your assistantship is for
>$10/month, I can't imagine how you could come up with a list of standards
>required for a dissertation which would cost more than a thousand bucks. 
>My perception is that most people are just lazy; they're not willing to go
>out of their way to get copies of standards since FTP is so simple.  

>However, if you're sincere, then here's several ways you can get what you
>want:

Other possibilities:

1 - McGraw-Hill publishes a set of volumes that cover most of the ISO/
CCITT/FIPS standards in communications. It's about 2 shelf feet, and 
I've seen it advertised for ~$600. [this implies that OSI and CCITT are
willing to license their copyrights for a lot less than the list price
of the standards documents.]

2 - Working documents that go on to become standards are not covered
by copyright, at least in the CCITT. Thus if you pay the (exhorbitant)
per-page costs to Omnicom or whoever to get copies of the final Plenary
drafts of various standards, you can make as many copies as you want.
(or such is my understanding...)

Of course, that doesn't help you if you want a single copy. Also, they
might stop selling copies of these documents once the final standard
is published. If anyone wanted to set up a "Free OSI Specs" operation,
this might be a place to start. 

By the way, for anyone interested in a bit more detail on the mechanics
of standards bodies funding, etc., I would recommend the U.S. Office of
Technology Assessment report "Global Standards - Building Blocks for
the Future". It's not well written (read the first chapter last - it's
the conclusion for people who don't want to read the whole thing, and
in a large part repeats selected parts of following chapters) but it's
cheap and has a lot of footnotes and hard facts on who gets their money
where, who hates who, etc.

[110 pages, $5.50 (+25% shipping for international orders) to New Orders,
Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954
USA]

				Peter Desnoyers
-- 
Xref: sparky comp.protocols.iso:1233 comp.protocols.iso.x400:598
From: rlglende@netcom.com (Robert Lewis Glendenning)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso,comp.protocols.iso.x400
Subject: Wanted: ISO OSI specs via ftp
Date: 6 Oct 92 18:44:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Oct6.184429.23374
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

I started the recent round of ISO bashing, have learned more, and want to
add a little perspective.

Open Systems Foundation doesn't provide any of its documentation on-line
either, even tho it is apparently free !

There is a paper-based mentality in the world which doesn't comprehend
the new technologies. As I may have said previously, when you add together
the effects of this kind of point of view, ISO's need to get revenue from
publications, and a bureaucratic lethargy, it will be 2050 before the
publications are available on-line.

ISO is not an exception, but rather the rule. We have to wait for the
current paper-based mentality to die out, just as this is the solution
for all other bottlenecks in cultural evolution.

If anybody has a better technology for changing fundamental mental sets,
get in touch. We can make a bundle marketing this technology.

Lew

-- 
Lew Glendenning		rlglende@netcom.com
"Perspective is worth 80 IQ points."	Nils Bohr (or somebody like that).
From: shri@unreal.cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Summary: Public spending and OSI transition ...
Date: 29 Sep 92 05:36:36 GMT
Reply-To: shri@unreal.cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar)
Organization: UMass, Amherst, MA +  Temporal Sys & Comp Net, Bombay, India

In article <3043@ucl-cs.uucp> J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Jon Crowcroft) writes:
>
>hmm - with various announcements like ERNET in india, i suspect you
>are gonna see another order of logarithimic growth injected into
>internet protocols

   Provokes me to butt in .. :-) 

   ERNET (like JANET) used to swear by OSI !!

   But, ERNET has not contributed a fraction of as much impact it could
   have on the IP address space ! I sincerely wish it did tho'. :-) We
could have been the *big* necessity to mother inventions for solutions
to the IP fill up problem ... tho' I'm not sure if we still cant !
(Back when I was around in the team starting up the activity, I had
thought that the demand for more IP than just one class B would happen
real soon ... but it does not seem to have yet, that was over 2 years
ago!.)

    This being a thread on OSI and public spending (wasn't it, come on
now ! :-) ERNET is as good an example as JNT. And has gone a similar way
too. There a lot of IP going on there now, contact with the IP
community in the US is only going to see that overshadow (in real
impact terms) any OSI/X.400 activity there.

    In all fairness, however, some very serious efforts are on there
to bring X.400 as the E-mail backbone (tho' there are camps on either
side of the fence). IMHO, this effort is still an "experimental/engg"
one as opposed to "operational" in functioning.  Perhaps, someone
from ERNET can correct me if I am wrong.

    This is in some sense in line with my pet prediction. That OSI
as a major force in general networking will perhaps not happen, but
X.400 as an application would surely climb high, and that market I'm
sure is growing leaps and bounds in the commercial circles.

>the Internet trick to have free specs
>was to distribute the cost of specs and implemntations throughout all
>itnerested parties - > 

  Some of the cost is artificial, due to restricted information
flows and protected territories. Less synergy. It is sometimes
a win-win situation ...and it takes a long time for most 
"prefessional bodies" and "govts" .. read carreer technocrats
to realise this. 

  So Internet did not just only spread the cost, it also lowered the
real cost by focussing lots of synergsitic attention from several
hackers, labs and research work.

-- shrikumar ( shri@iucaa.ernet.in , shri@legato.cs.umass.edu )
From: jira@latcs5.lat.oz.au (Ajin Jirachiefpattana)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: GENSIM for SUN SPARC station ?
Date: 5 Oct 92 06:34:27 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia

I am looking for GENSIM package which is a general network simulation
facility running on SUN SPARC station, public domain preferrable.
Thanks for any pointer.

Ajin Jirachiefpattana
jira@latcs1.lat.oz.au

Department of Computer Science & Computer Engineering
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic., 3083.
Australia.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
From: rjc@cc.gatech.edu (Russell J. Clark)
Subject: IGOSS (Was Re: GOSIP specs)
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:32:36 GMT

>Yes,
>
>US The US GOSIP specification is available via anonymous ftp. 

What about IGOSS documents? I haven't seen much on this other than
a couple of trade rag announcements. Are there any IGOSS documents yet?
If so, how does one go about obtaining them?

Thanks!
-- 
----------
Russ Clark
College of Computing, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Internet: rjc@cc.gatech.edu
From: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Markus Kuhn)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: Catalogue of OSI and Related standards
Keywords: OSI,catalogue,search
Date: 4 Oct 92 14:14:30 GMT
Reply-To: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Organization: CSD., University of Erlangen, Germany

ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:

>If anyone can tell me where I can find up-to-date information on the
>status (DP/DIS/IS etc.), of each ISO standard, I could add it to my
>current list (in SGML) of ISO/CCITT/ECMA standards and acronyms.

Great!!! I received the following information about the "ISO bulletin",
which might be of help for your efforts from David Gay for the FAQ:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

     - what is the ISO bulletin

It is a publication of the ISO Central Secretariat. Each issue contains:

- A number of articles on various ISO standardisation issues. For example,
the September bulletin has 3 articles on 'Paints and Varnishes', one on
the need for standards in advanced ceramics, another on 'ISO 4270,
Essential oils - Nomenclature', and (to bring the subject back to OSI) one
on 'ISO/IEC 8831, Information Technology - OSI - Job transfer and
manipulation concepts and services (JTM)'.

- A summary of standardisation activities: the September issue lists,
for the 15 July to August 13 period, all the standards published or
withdrawn, the DISs circulated, the CDs registerd, etc. It also has
a calendar of all upcoming ISO meetings.

     - where can I get it

You get it from your 'national member body', or the ISO Secretariat
in Geneva if there isn't one. The price is fixed by each member body.
You can get more information from:

Promotion and Press Department
Case Postale 56
CH-1211 Geneve 20
Switzerland

     - who might be interested in the ISO bulletin

Presumably anybody who is participating in or following an ISO standard ...
(the current state of standardisation activities is obviously what is
most interesting).


David Gay
dgay@di.epfl.ch
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Switzerland

----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Anyone sure whether publishing such a list is ok legally?

YES! I don't know any country in which a list of products produced by a
company is protected by copyright if this list has not been compiled
by this company. There should be absolutely no problem, but you could
ask at the ISO address given above if you want to be 100% sure.

Markus

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student -=-=- University of Erlangen, Germany
Internet: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de  |  X.500 entry available
-A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't-
-even know existed can render your own computer unusable. (Leslie Lamport)-
From: Dr. Alex Kuo <alex@dset.UUCP>
From: shri@unreal.cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Date: 27 Sep 92 14:31:42 GMT
Reply-To: shri@unreal.cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar)
Organization: UMass, Amherst, MA + Temporal Sys & Comp Net, Bombay, India

In article <SES.92Sep26213956@cmns-sun.think.com> 
ses@cmns-sun.think.com (Simon Edward Spero) writes:

>might be worth a try is setting up a 'free OSI foundation': under EC
>law, an interface specification cannot be copyrighted; it would be
>entirely legal to take a copy of the OSI standards, and rewrite the
>text in a form that would not be owned by the ISO. Whilst great care

IMHO, Rewriting in any significantly different form, in a different
language (such as some other formal language) etc. might just consume
so much effort that it would not not be affordable, unless pooling of
resources via USENET happens. And that is not easy to organise.

It takes so much time and effort to just wade thru the stuff, so it
stands to reason that paraphrasing it in some other tongue would take
just as much time, and would  have to go thru some years of draft and
approval to make sure it means the same thing as the original.

What could be done is to list out, as a commentary (thus making the
copyright case easy to handle) the differences (from a detailed
implementation point of view) between the corresponding CCITT and
ISO documents. Those docs that have no CCITT equivalent alone would
need writing, and even there some other more public-accessible
versions (eg. IEEE 802.3) would be available.

Such a compilations of "diffs", as it were, might concievably
serve the same ends.

[Note: most CCITT docs are on-line already(one way of the other ;-).]

>The standards which would benefit most from this, judging from the requests
>sent to this group, are ASN.1 and the BER. Anybody think this is worth a 
>crack?

   I am not aware of any significant diffs (besides a small one about
object ids, and the EXTENSIONS macro) between ISO and CCITT versions
of BER. Would not X.208, X.209 do very well ?

-- shrikumar ( shri@legato.cs.umass.edu, shrikumar@cs.umass.edu,
               shri@iucaa.ernet.in )
From: ses@cmns-sun.think.com (Simon Edward Spero)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: WAIS
Date: 28 Sep 92 06:04:50
Organization: What's your clearance, citizen?
NNTP-Posting-Host: cmns-sun.think.com
In-reply-to: kong@mel.dit.csiro.au's message of Mon, 28 Sep 92 06:11:04 GMT


In article <1992Sep28.061104.7441@mel.dit.csiro.au> kong@mel.dit.csiro.au (Alan Kong) writes:

   I am looking for discussion papers/documents on WAIS, could someone please point 
   me the direction.

   Thanks in advance.

Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais, alt.wais(obsolete)

Mailing lists: 
		wais-talk@quake.think.com
		wais-discussion@quake.think.com

Ftp:		think.com:/wais

Wais:		wais-talk-archive.src, wais-discussion-achive.src

There are also a couple of Z3950 mailing lists

Simon
--
-----
Guest account at TMC 	|	Just Another  WAIS Hacker | DOD# 0612
From: ses@cmns-sun.think.com (Simon Edward Spero)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Date: 26 Sep 92 22:00:24
Organization: What's your clearance, citizen?
	<23360A@erik.naggum.no>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cmns-sun.think.com
In-reply-to: Erik Naggum's message of 27 Sep 1992 02:13:02 +0200

In article <23360A@erik.naggum.no> Erik Naggum <enag@ifi.uio.no> writes:
   Hah!  What freedom?  Freedom of access, but only if you were already
   connected.  Five years ago, this was not an easy job, and it has been
   far from free.  If you, as a communications consultant should get
   Internet access or e-mail access to these documents, you would pay
   through your nose for telecommunication services, too.  That's _my_
   biggest cost, by almost an order of magnitude.

I'm actually located in England at the moment, and use the same IP provider
as Phil. The cost of this service (dialup SLIP/PPP at V32bis/V42bis) is
a grand total of #10 per month, plus phone bills.

   That depends.  OSI is spreading faster than Internet protocols did with
   the same distribution.  The Internet growth is approaching linear
   growth, while we're only in the early exponential phase of OSI

That's not strictly accurate, unless you're plotting the Internet growth on
a logarithmic scale. It was still exponential in July. I don't know 
about the OSI growth patterns; however the moral loss of the Janet community
to JIPS ought to have sent things into a bit of a slide. Since Janet 
was supposed to be an OSI flagship, and since people are only using the OSI
side of things when they are forced to at budget-point, this is a major 
climbdown. Negative exponential is still exponential though.

Simon


--
-----
Guest account at TMC 	|	Just Another  WAIS Hacker | DOD# 0612
From: dgay@di.epfl.ch (David Gay)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO specs.
Date: 30 Sep 92 13:25:30 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
In-reply-to: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de's message of 29 Sep 92 12:55:29 GMT

In article <BvCBwH.99u@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Markus Kuhn) writes:
   Is anyone forwarding the opinions expressed in this discussion to some
   higher layers within the International Organization for Standardization,
   to the people who make the decisions about prices and distribution
   conditions for ISO docs? I'm quite sure that the ISO president doesn't
   read this USENET group regularly, so it's time to write a few letters,
   isn't it? Perhaps ISO simply underestimates the interest for their
   documents outside the implementation departments of huge companies ...

In the latest ISO bulletin (September 1992), there is a note on:

"Electronic Publishing and Distribution of Internation Standards Study
launched"

Here are some excerpts (reproduced without permission):

  ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) announced
  that they are undertaking a joint study of technical, economic and
  market factors affecting distribution and use of standards in a variety
  of electronic media including optical discs, magentic tape and online
  networks. The availability of databases in electronic media enables
  users to realize numerous benifits. ISO and IEC want to ensure that
  users of their standards can take advantage of the improved productivity,
  comprehensive search capability and other benefits of electronic
  delivery.

  [...] Three categories of users will be studied: standardization
  specialists, libraries and tthose ultimately apply standards in
  industry, commerce and government.

  Results of the study are expected to be available in early 1993. [...]

  [...] [Mr. Anthony Raeburn, IEC General Secretary] 'We have a singular
  opportunity to make it easier to use standards, but we must understand
  what the users really need, and what they are willing to pay.'

So ISO is still expecting to make money from standards ...


   -- 
   Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student -=-=- University of Erlangen, Germany
   Internet: mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de  |  X.500 entry available


David Gay
dgay@di.epfl.ch
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Laboratoire d'Informatique Technique