Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/volume.13/text0038.txt

Internet Message Format | 1988-04-18 | 1.7 KB

From: [e-mail] (Ralph Hyre)

In article <[e-mail]>:
>From: [e-mail]
>
>    Is there a machine readable copy of the ANSI C standard available?
>Alas, no.  ANSI makes its money from publishing standards.  If there was
>a machine readable copy of the standard around for anonymous ftp, then many
>people would get a hold of it that way, rather than buy it from ANSI.
....
>My own personal opinion is that standards ought to be developed by some
>sort of subsidized, not-for-profit organization, and be available at media
>cost.  (For all I know ANSI may BE "not-for-profit".  That still doesn't
>mean they'll give away the standards they create.)

Licensing the standards documents would be another alternative, then you'd
have competition among the various licensees for price and the kinds of
distributions available.  Another alternative would be charging members for
ANSI membership, but this might discourage smaller companies from joining,
(or encourage large companies to stack the deck) and politicize the process
even more.

There's no reason that USENIX or some similar group couldn't come up with a
Unix standard, but that would violate the spirit of what ANSI is trying to do.

[ I'm pretty sure the USENIX board of directors wouldn't be interested.
Doubtless everyone is aware that IEEE 1003 began as the /usr/group Standards
Committee, and that /usr/group currently sponsors the /usr/group Technical
Committee, which investigates areas that 1003 hasn't reached yet.  -mod ]

--
                    - Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.

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Volume-Number: Volume 13, Number 40