[Foundation-l] Request for approval for a wiki for standards

Sun Jan 8 14:50:47 UTC 2006

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>> I want to add that there is a huge need for open and free (as in 
>> speech as well as beer) standards.  Even modestly priced standards 
>> from groups like ANSI or ISO can cost more than $200 a piece, and 
>> I've seen some fairly general standards documents costing more than 
>> $100,000 each with some incredibly draconian non-disclosure 
>> agreements.  Even supposedly public standards like the National 
>> Electrical Code that governs how buildings are wired with electricity 
>> can cost a couple thousand dollars... and that is a matter of law 
>> that you have to live by.  
>
>
> To what extent do these standards have the force of law, particularly 
> in the United States.  When the United States ratifies a treaty it 
> means that it has effectively made that treaty a part of the law of 
> the United States.  Since US laws are excluded from copyright we 
> should be free to include the standards that have been so adopted into 
> Wikisource.
>
> Ec

Treaties are one thing, but I'm also talking civil code that is passed 
by legislative bodies, including the U.S. Congress.  The National 
Electrical Code in particular has been adopted almost completely by 
several state legislatures in the USA and all construction that takes 
place in those states, by law, must conform to that standard as a 
result.  What is interesting about this particular set of codes is that 
the body who wrote the standard is still claiming copyright status over 
the text of the code, dispite the fact that they have lobbied for and 
won formal legislative approval for the code by governmental bodies. 
 The actual copyright status is unclear at the moment and subject to 
legal wrangling, and is going through the court system right now where 
some people are suing precisely because it is felt that actual laws that 
we live under should be made available in the public domain.  Because of 
the murky legal status at the moment, I would recommend that the 
Wikimedia Foundation and sister projects stay away from standards like 
this at the moment.  Still, I'm giving this as an example of a standard 
that should be free, and had it been available in a copyleft license 
instead of a propritary license by a bunch of people trying to make some 
quick money, the whole legal mess could have been avoided.

The justification for charging anything for standards at all usually 
breaks down into the following arguments:

1) The physical media that the standards are printed on isn't cheap, 
including web servers to host the content.
2) Standards development costs money to develop, including dealing with 
staff members who have to help organize and maintain the standards 
documents for long after the development has been completed, and 
organizing conferences that get the standards committee members together.
3) Some industries want to put a higher bar up for people trying to 
implement the standards, and if you can put up $100,000 for a standard 
document, you are likely to have some serious additional money to get a 
business going that would use the standard.

Of these arguments, I really only support the first one, and that is an 
issue that the Wikimedia Foundation deals with all of the time anyway. 
 This proposal is to have the organization of the standards take place 
in virtual space, so there is no need to put up a standing committee in 
4-star hotels, car rentals, plane tickets, and all of the rest of the 
expenses that happen with trying to get a group of people physically 
brought together.  That by itself will substantially reduce the costs of 
standards development.  If a group still wants to physically get 
together at a place like Wikimania, they can but it must be done at 
their own expense and is independent of the development of the standard 
itself.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning