I think we should give credit to Carl Malamud and Tony Rutkowski,
whe spent many months in Geneva at least ten years ago, sowing the
seeds for this move by the ITU.
Brian
On 2006-12-25 18:41, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Since my Narten number has been rather low of late, and since
this should be of wide interest and is directly relevant to the IETF's
functions, and
since I had not heard of it previously, I thought I would distribute this.
I also thought that people would like the reasoning behind this decision.
Regards (& Happy Holidays to all)
Marshall Eubanks
http://www.dailypayload.com/2006/1221.html
ITU to Distribute Standards Free of Charge
December 21, 2006
Many people in the telecommunication industry have pressed for the ITU
to make its standards documents available free of charge. Well, the long
wait is over. Starting January 2, 2007 the ITU will make its standards
documents available to the public free of charge.
The same kind of change in policy took place at ETSI several years ago.
Reportedly, making its standards available for free did not have a
negative impact on ETSI's bottom line. Rather, the free standards helped
to drive participation in the standards-making body, thus compensating
for any loss in revenue.This move came after a very long trial wherein
the ITU allowed a person to register an e-mail address and download
three documents free. This trial demonstrated conclusively that there
was a strong desire to receive standards at no cost.
Since the ITU publishes some documents jointly with ISO, special
consideration will be given to those "common" texts, since ISO still
charges for its standards and is apparently heavily dependent on the
revenue from the sales of its standards. For such "common" texts for
which ISO charges a fee, the ITU will not release documents free of
charge until they are at least one year old.
Documents will be made available in PDF format, downloadable directly
from the ITU web site.
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