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Roger L. Costello wrote:
>Thanks for the info James. There are some folks at my company that are
>"gun shy" of using ISO standards due to a "licensing fee" they impose
>(see following message). What are your thoughts on this?
>
>A message from one of my colleagues:
>
>
>>Remember that ISO has tried to impose a licensing fee on use of
>>their country code standard. Given that sad effort, I would
>>advise against use of any ISO standard if there was a viable
>>alternative. If they can do it for country codes, they can
>>impose licensing fees for use of any of their standards,
>>e.g., Relax-NG.
>>
>>
>
>
Tell them to get their facts straight for a start. ISO did not try to
impose a new license:
the ISO site had some poor wording but at no stage did the official
policy change.
We all kicked up a fuss, and things were clarified satisfactorily.
ISO standards are copyright, and anyone publishing them publicly is
supposed to
negotiate licensing agreements. This does not effect use in programs.
This is no
different from W3C, for example, who do not allow you to republish their
specs
on your website or publish them to print without negotiating permission
(at least
this was their policy last year or so).
Roger should ask his collegue whether (s)he would also ban W3C
recommondations
for the same reason. I hope that collegue will send around a memo to
all who
received the original memo retracting the claim and apologizing for
spreading FUD
about ISO.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
P.S. In any case, in the case of the country codes, ISO would have great
difficulty
justifying copyright on the code list itself rather than the text of the
standard,
because some countries wouldn't allow copyright on lists and in those
that do
allow copyright on lists/directories, the ISO lists' provenance --I
believe much
of it came from the UN-- mightn't reach the level of originality or effort.
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