On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:55:05 +0100, Mr Fizzion
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:52:25 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:


Having said all of that, there is a huge cost in the preparation of
and testing to standards. It is reasonable for much of that cost to
be borne by those wishing to access and use that information in the
same way that we pay for other intellectual property like books and
music.

Well in that case there is no reason to pay more for a British
Standard than an EN or ISO standard.

Except that the potential readership and hence the cost recovery
opportunity is likely to be much larger for a given ISO or EN standard
than it is for a British one.




Thankfully with computer standards, there is little or no cost.
Demanding four figure sums would instantly put smaller players out of
the game and every bit of software in the world would be developed by
Microsoft or Oracle. Consider the enormous cost of validating a C++
compiler to ISO 14882. This involves many man years of testing.
Preparation of the standard itself took a decade and the committee
still meets regularly with the aim of revising the standard every 10
years. Yet it only costs USD 18 in PDF format.

OK, so the cost recovery by ISO is in additional ways.

--

..andy

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