Re: BCP97bis

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Sunday, October 17, 2021 07:25 -0400 Scott Bradner
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> no correction needed - remember that when 2026 was approved
> most SDOs (e.g., the ITU-T) did not make their standards
> available for free so that had to be part of the world the
> IETF lived in
> 
> fwiw - I think that ANSI X3.4-1986 (the standard used as an
> example in RC 2026)  was not available for free at that point

That is correct.  It was easier to get permission from some ANSI
accredited SDOs to reprint parts of standards than it was with
many other bodies, but the standard itself was generally not
available for free.  It is probably also worth remembering that
they generally tried to minimize or avoid registration fees for
meeting in the interest of openness and diversity of opinions.
Partially as a result, revenue from sales of those standards was
a significant fraction of the income that kept those bodies
going, i.e., they were not being restrictive just to be
difficult.  For some SDOs, their way of thinking about that
tradeoff has not changed very much.

FWIW, I have no idea whether permission was obtained to extract
and reproduce material from X3.4-1968 to act as the basis for
RFC 20 or whether the conclusion at the time was that it was not
necessary.  Categories like "Information" and "Internet
Standard" did not exist at the time, so those choices did not
need to be made at the time.

    john


   john