The following may be of concern to users of IETF standards, particularly
with respect to use of RFC3066 [3] (which itself cites ISO 3166 and ISO
639) and other standards that reference it.
W3C has published the text of a letter [1] sent to ISO president Dr. Oliver
Smoot expressing concern about a suggestion that ISO would charge software
developers to use ISO codes in their products:
[[
"Companies who develop software products for sale to other parties are
adding value to their products by including the data elements from an ISO
Code in proper applications ...via the sale of the product the developing
company is not only being compensated for its direct efforts to incorporate
the ISO Codes in apropriate locations but it is also being compensated for
trhe value the ISO Codes have added to its product. The ISO community
should also be compensated for providing the intellectual property required
to incorporate the value-added features into the product."
]]
-- excerpted from [2]
#g
--
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2003JulSep/0213
[2] http://www.ncits.org/archive/2003/in031008/in031008.htm
[3] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt
------------
Graham Klyne
GK(_at_)NineByNine(_dot_)org