If ISO is never going to charge for use of such fundamental standards as
country codes, it should warrant that it never will. In todays age of
"Intellectual Property Rights" madness, their failure to so warrant
leaves all users vulnerable to arbitrary future disruption and charges.
Thanks,
Donald
======================================================================
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
dee3(_at_)torque(_dot_)pothole(_dot_)com
155 Beaver Street +1-508-634-2066(h)
Milford, MA 01757 USA
Donald(_dot_)Eastlake(_at_)motorola(_dot_)com
On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, John C Klensin wrote:
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 13:22:02 -0400
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
Subject: Re: Proposal to charge for commercial use of ISO country codes?
Unless Ollie's intent is being misinterpreted --the statement
isn't completely clear to me-- this idea is nuts. The whole
foundation of the voluntary standards model, of which ISO would
like to consider itself the center, is that there are never any
licensing fees for using a standard (excessive document-purchase
fees, maybe, but not licensing fees for use :-( ).
In the case of those code lists, especially 3166, I'd assume
that some other body would rapidly work out an agreement with
the UN source of the entries and that would be the end of ISO's
role. As the W3C note sort of points out, that would be very
disruptive and would serve no one's interests, least of all that
of ISO's status and reputation.
Just my opinion, of course.
john
--On Saturday, 20 September, 2003 16:41 +0100 Graham Klyne
<gk(_at_)ninebynine(_dot_)org> wrote:
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