Subject: ISO specs. 
Distribution: world
Organization: Peer Association
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 18:01:13 +0000


In article <23360A@erik.naggum.no> enag@ifi.uio.no writes:
>
>.... so one hour of your time is worth weeks and months if they should do
>it themselves, right?  Are you selling your services too cheaply?

No, my fees are competitive...

PR>|   At these prices, the full set of standards would run into many
PR>|   hundreds of UK pounds.  And I repeat, many of us need these for
PR>|   tutorial and reference purposes.
>
>Look, who do you think you're talking to?  I own ISO and CCITT standards
>worth more than an high-end 1000 cc motorcycle, which, come to think of
>it, I'd much rather have invested in if I had known then what I do now.
>
But, Erik the fact that you and I can afford to pay ISO (& BSI's)
prices does not justify their decision to prevent them from being available
via a lower cost, easy-to-disseminate route such as FTPing over the internet.

>Besides, you only prove ISO's point: Why should they give you things
>which you can use to obtain knowledge, expertise, and the ability to
>reap future income from your consulting work?  

Precisely because that knowledge which I can gain from them will
be to the client's benefit, and indirectly to the whole comms community.
The more people who know more about OSI the better for OSI.

>I think the crucial point here is that the investment you think is
>large, is less than it would cost a large company to give you an office
>space with a computer and network connection.  When you have enough
>money to spend a couple years on research and expect to break even in
>another couple years, ISO documents aren't expensive compared to the
>other costs involved.  

That's a fair point for you and I, but what about students and young people 
starting off in a career in comms  - surely it's good for them to be able
to have low cost acces to OSI docs & specs?

What about the small software authors  - the ones who potentially could write
REALLY low cost implementations?  The easy dissemination of OSI standards
would encourage PD and shareware for OSI.  I see a great benefit in (say) an
MHS UA for DOS at $25.00, or a TP4/8473 stack for $50.00, not the large
software fees that these products currently command. (Eg. Unisys U6000
stack for TP4/8473 (over 8802/3, X.25 etc.) runs at 1200 UK pounds!
>
>Another thing to remember is that standards are often held by large
>public libraries, and specialized libraries. 

Yes, I ought to start investigating this route...

PR|   Contrast this position with the freedom of access to RFCs....
>
>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.

My DIS access to the internet costs ten UK pounds per month, no usage
charges and only local telephone costs.  The s/w is an FTP/Telnet/TCP/IP
stack running over PPP, in DOS.  It is available as free copyright s/w, which
underwrites my earlier point  -  when will the equivalent OSI stack be so
cheaply available?

>|   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).
>
>Man, you've got a fast printer. :-)

Nope, but I mostly stop for a coffee on the way to the garage...

>My printer, btw, has a page cost of about 40% of that of a published
>(large) ISO document, and three times that of a CCITT published page.  I
>would hate to print 25,000 pages on it, to put it that way.  Besides, I
>like the better binding (!) and paper quality of published standards,
>and especially the good printing quality of CCITT recommendations (which
>keep my shelf space down to one about half of what normal laser-printer
>paper would require).  Your comparison doesn't scale well, in my view.

OK, but I don't need the whole text of most standards, just enopugh to 
understand them.  For example, a few months ago I needed ISO 10589 in order
to formulate a router strategy for a very large public sector client.  
I needed to know all about the concepts of IS-IS routing, areas, 
subdomains etc. in order to plan ahead and spec. our purchasing policy.
It was also necessary to plan for routing policies in the initial
development of the WAN.   I didn't need all the detail stuff at the 
end of the standard on encoding PDUs.  ( I suppose I need "technical
overview" material, but that is never avialable except in the body of 
the standard.)

PR|   Whilst this situation prevails, the quality of understanding, advice
PR|   technical knowledge and clear strategies will be higher for TC/IP
PR|   related issues than for OSI.
>
>.... unless you take part in the development process, of course, or
>expect to make tons of monetas selling conforming products, in which
>case the costs of acquisition approach a relative zero.

Yes, that must work for some consultants, and I know many who are on BSI,
EWOS, OSI committees.  But not all consultants can be, that's illogical.


> 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
>protocols, still.  That means Internet protocols have a pure time
>advantage it will take many years to overtake, but with the commercial
>drive behind OSI, I would hedge my bets. 

Where do you get your figures?  My understanding (without any official stats)
is that OSI is creeping slowly into the public sector, but TCP/IP systems
(and IP router) sales are booming in the private sector, and keeping ahead 
in the public sector.

PR|   The question is: does it matter?
>
>Yes.  Take part in the standards development, and get first-hand
>information about the process, the new projects, the draft standards,
>etc.  Trust me, this is _much_ less expensive than buying the final
>standards, and you get to whine about them when it still matters.  Ex
>post facto whining is _so_ pointless.

I AM NOT WHINING....

>Best regards,
></Erik>

and to you too,

--
Phil Royse   Comms Consultant, Purley   |  Mail brought to you by PCElm 3.01.
            Surrey UK (+44)81 645-9868  | 
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso,comp.protocols.iso.x400