On Standards....
Posted by
Mark Fraser
on 2000-02-03 06:34:32 UTC
Standards are as often as not used as barriers to trade. In the
telecom industry, standards are essentially the product of lobbying.
The ITU, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, finally blessed a compromise
between two 56K modem standards. *At least*, there is enough market
to force compliance and compatibility.
ETSI, the European Telecom. Standards Institute, has long been the
protector of Euro (read "member nation lobbied by firms based in
said nations") manufacturers, while AT&T filled that role in the U.S.
for decades. Of course, Europeans will defend ETSI as much as we,
on this continent will defend our own standards. Which, by the way,
are historically inconsistent with the rest of the world's.
What galls me most, and the machine tool industry isn't alone here,
is when standards are used as barriers to DOMESTIC trade. Agencies
such as CSA in Canada, EIA and others comprise committees of
"volunteers"
whose salaries and expenses are paid by the firms with an interest in
gaining an advantage *and* who can afford to keep their respective
volunteers on the payroll. It can reasonably be argued that in some
cases, the desired interworking / compatibility does result, but
often it's just another manifestation of "cartel".
The IEEE, by the way, will probably *always* charge for copies of
documents, as a huge percentage of their revenue comes from that end.
Membership dues would go through the ionosphere if their standards
docs were published for free access on the web.....
Anyhow, let's not beat up on NIST's EMC efforts - I'm grateful that
some of the investment actually makes it out to the public domain,
and that the end result is useful! Let's not corrupt that value
with a kneejerk reaction to Linux, V5.2 of which went into my machine
in under 2 hours! (And I'm no pro!) / mark
telecom industry, standards are essentially the product of lobbying.
The ITU, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, finally blessed a compromise
between two 56K modem standards. *At least*, there is enough market
to force compliance and compatibility.
ETSI, the European Telecom. Standards Institute, has long been the
protector of Euro (read "member nation lobbied by firms based in
said nations") manufacturers, while AT&T filled that role in the U.S.
for decades. Of course, Europeans will defend ETSI as much as we,
on this continent will defend our own standards. Which, by the way,
are historically inconsistent with the rest of the world's.
What galls me most, and the machine tool industry isn't alone here,
is when standards are used as barriers to DOMESTIC trade. Agencies
such as CSA in Canada, EIA and others comprise committees of
"volunteers"
whose salaries and expenses are paid by the firms with an interest in
gaining an advantage *and* who can afford to keep their respective
volunteers on the payroll. It can reasonably be argued that in some
cases, the desired interworking / compatibility does result, but
often it's just another manifestation of "cartel".
The IEEE, by the way, will probably *always* charge for copies of
documents, as a huge percentage of their revenue comes from that end.
Membership dues would go through the ionosphere if their standards
docs were published for free access on the web.....
Anyhow, let's not beat up on NIST's EMC efforts - I'm grateful that
some of the investment actually makes it out to the public domain,
and that the end result is useful! Let's not corrupt that value
with a kneejerk reaction to Linux, V5.2 of which went into my machine
in under 2 hours! (And I'm no pro!) / mark