[SCL] Re: some explanation

[John F. Sowa]

Harry,

I've been working on the CG part, and I'll
send an update by the end of the week.

I also wanted to clarify the following point:

HD> ISO makes money selling the standards, but many
 > common standards are "freely available" meaning
 > that ISO has agreed they can be distributed without
 > fee, as long as documents and copyright notices
 > remain intact, etc. It's possible such a decision
 > can be made in the case of the CL standard.

It is also true that a very large number of ISO
and ANSI standards originated from base documents
that were contributed from other sources -- some
from proprietary sources (such as IBM, Univac, etc.)
and others from published books and reports.

I suggest that the technical parts of the standard
be submitted as parts of W3C drafts, which are
always freely published on the web.  Since both
Pat and I are writing our material in HTML, there
should be no problem in putting the original source
material on a web site.

Since Pat has been working with the W3C already,
I would defer to his judgment about their procedures.
But I believe that we should put the same technical
material into the W3C mill *first* so that they
have it on the web in a free version before it goes
through the ISO mill.

ISO will then hold the copyright over the final
version that bears their stamp of approval, but
the technical material will already be available
anyway.

John