> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Bill Dueber
> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:45 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Open, public standards v. pay per view
> standards and usage
>
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Houghton,Andrew <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but this is a specious
> example,
Yes it was and I tried to point that out. I'm sure others might be
able to come up with examples in or out of the library domain where
only having the schema wasn't an issue to adoption. This is why I
said: "it depends", but in philosophy I agree that it's generally a
barrier to adoption.
> The ISO 208775 schema, for example, include elements like <xs:element
> name="physicalLocation"> -- and there's no way you're going to know
> what the hell goes in there without a lot more help. And if you were
> to have to pay for that help, many would rely on cheat-sheets or
> pattern-matching and it all goes to hell.
Exactly the point of the rest of my prior post, but more bluntly put :)
So why do people keep running new standards thru organizations like ISO
that lock them up behind a pay system? It's probably better to run them
through NISO first where they will be freely available, then run them
through ISO where ISO can lock them up for the people who require the ISO
stamp of approval before they can use a standard.
Now a days, all standards should be free. They are created by people from
participating institutions who put their time and effort into them, not by
the institution where they are housed. Charging for standards is counter
productive to adoption. In the past, before the Web, you could get away
with that business model because you didn't have a low cost distribution
model. Today it doesn't cost much to house a digital copy, heck Google
Docs and other cloud services will do it for free. I can see paying for a
standard if I want a bound printed copy of the standard, otherwise it just
doesn’t make sense [to me].
Andy.
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