4 ms·
standard writers usually do all the work for free. My dad worked on a couple of standards, and while he wasn't paid by the standards body he didn't work for fr
by dagw 5y ago
standard writers usually do all the work for free.
My dad worked on a couple of standards, and while he wasn't paid by the standards body he didn't work for free. He was employed at a company and the company paid him his salary. Working on those standards was just another part of his day job.
- teddyh 5y agoYour dad also did not own the work he performed, the company he worked for owned it. It was that company which chose to donate the work (which your dad did) to the standards body. If I donate food to a food bank, would it be fair for someone else to say “That food wasn’t donated for free! A store got paid for that food!” No, of course not. See also: https://satwcomic.com/every-time https://satwcomic.com/every-time
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kbsspl 5y agomakes one think why those companies are paying for something to be a standard.
- remram 5y agoHaving your own data model/format/protocol become the standard makes it a lot cheaper for you to support the standard later. Everyone else has to support your stuff.
- dagw 5y agoAlso having your company name appear next to the name of editor or principal author of a standard is no doubt useful from a marketing point of view if part of your business is to help people implement that standard.
- dagw 5y agoIt was that company which chose to donate the work (which your dad did) to the standards body. That's exactly my point. The standard _organization_ gets the work for free, but the standard _writers_ are almost always paid for their work and aren't working for free. The original comment made it sound like the standard writers where somehow being exploited or where donating their time to the standard organization. In your analogy the writer is the food store, and the company is the person that bought the food to donate.
- teddyh 5y ago> The original comment made it sound like the standard writers [were] somehow being exploited or [were] donating their time to the standard organization. No, I read it as pointing out that ISO does not need to be paid in order to pay its contributors, since ISO does not pay its contributors. The point was about ISO, not its contributors.
- chii 5y agothe standards organization's number one goal is to continue to exist, and thus, they ask people who want the standard to pay for their existence. It's basically all a wastage, because an electronic record keeping and content management system can be cheaply administered, rather than as an organization.
- necovek 5y agoI've clarified that the point is that ISO is not compensating standard writers (iow, ISO does not need the money to create standards themselves), as teddyh correctly interpreted it.
- wirrbel 5y agoI was once in a company that took part in standard writing and while from a technical perspective the work was good, it certainly was in the business interest of the company to be part of the standard-defining process.