Fw: ISO Wants to Charge for Use of country, currency andlanguage Codes

Sorry if this is old news for you.

--------------------------
Marion A. Royal
U.S. General Services Administration
202.208.4643 (Office)
202.302.4634 (Mobile)

Sent from PDA - Please excuse fat thumbs.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Kenneth B. Sall
  Sent: 09/21/2003 10:10 PM
  To: marion.royal
  Subject: ISO Wants to Charge for Use of country, currency and language Codes

 

Kenneth B. Sall
09/21/2003 03:58 PM

 To: &IAE_Team
 cc: lewis.sanford, judith.cohen, mark.raiffa, william.floria
 bcc: Kenneth B. Sall/CONTRACTOR/I/CO/GSA/GOV
 Subject: ISO Wants to Charge for Use of country, currency and language Codes
 

"At stake is a tentative proposal from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to add usage royalties for several code standards, a move that opponents say could weaken standards adherence by forcing software providers to pay a fee for each ISO-compliant product they sell. The standards--ISO 3166, ISO 4217, ISO 639--cover country, currency and language codes, respectively."

See
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/cnet/stories/5079256.htm
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5079256.html
and the W3C response to ISO:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2003JulSep/0213

"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wishes to express its deep concerns
over a recent proposal by the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group 
(CPSG) to charge fees for the commercial use of ISO codes such as ISO 
639 (language codes), ISO 3166 (country codes), and ISO 4127 (currency 
codes)...."