Re: R. e: ITU document server now costs money

John Day <Day@bbn.com> Sun, 30 July 1995 03:23 UTC

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From: John Day <Day@bbn.com>
Subject: Re: R. e: ITU document server now costs money
To: dcrocker@brandenburg.com
Cc: ietf@CNRI.Reston.VA.US, ISOC-Advisory-Council@linus.isoc.org, isoc-trustees@linus.isoc.org, jis@mit.edu, poised@tis.com
In-Reply-To: <v03002705ac3def6ac092@[204.118.88.38]>
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 1995 17:15:42 -0500
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Message-ID: <9507292315.aa00662@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>

>
>        At the moment, the IETF has no insight into the costs of its
>operation or the operation of related services such as IANA.  (There have
>been some IESG discussions, in the past and perhaps more recently, but not
>open IETF discussions.)  What I think WOULD be helpful is for an IETF
>budget to be formulated and the current cost-recovery basis to be listed.
>
I must agree with Dave on this.  As a said to some people I worked for
recently,  "I can understand a company having two sets of books, but I
can't understand having no books."  Even if you aren't going to do
anything it is always wise to know where the money is going, so you can
make intelligent decisions.  Who knows, it might be deductable!

>        To the extent that we want to consider alternative recovery
>mechanisms, that's fine, though I strongly concur with Jeff's view on NOT
>charging for documents.  To date the IETF community has taken a stance of
>benign neglect about its finances.  Someone has been paying, so let's not
>worry about it.  The problem is that there is some cost to this.  My own
>pet peeve is the continuing view that the US government "dominates" the
>IETF.  Well, it DOES fund the operation.  (Sorry, folks.  If you think that
>your attendance fee covers IETF costs, it doesn't.)
>
The ITU and ISO have never really understood the nature of cost recovery
in this arena.  ITU seems to be getting a better clue than ISO who still
has their head buried firmly in the sand (or was that somewhere else). 
I have always made the argument that on-line availability is a matter of
convienence.  I would prefer to have nice bound collections of the
standards I need to refer on a handy shelf and would be willing to pay
normal "textbook" prices for the convienence, rather than lots of loose
paper that gets schlepped into file folders or binders or more times
than not stacks of paper.  When the odd question comes up or something
new is available, I want to be able to get the answer quickly by hauling
the document back over the net.  In fact, for that convienence I would
be willing to pay a few bucks (but very few since the provider has
avoided all of the traditional publishing costs).

I don't like these flat rate approaches that have been discussed both
here and elsewhere because for a lot of people it is something that they
may never use and is therefore not easily justified in their company. 

The problem with the ITU and ISO is that they have no clue about
marketing or their customers.  Part of the problem is that they are
accustom to an environment where they never have to take a risk.  They
want to *know* they won't lose money before they start to investigate
doing something.  So there is not much chance they will ever make a move
that the customers want.  Worse yet the people who they talk to about
what they should do aren't either the standards users or even the
standards writers, but various adminstators of standards committees.

Can we continue to make stuff available for free?  Probably.  Should we
know how much free costs?  Yes.  At least then you will know whether you
can argue that it costs more to charge.  But ignorance is never a good
idea.  Someone is liable to surprise you.

Take care,
John