Re: [gpsd-dev] Copy of IEC 61162-1

[Sanjeev Gupta]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Greg Troxel <address@hidden> wrote:

Just to cut down on FUD: is this merely a copyrighted document?  Or is
there something more complicated going on - do people have to sign an
NDA to get it?

The IEC standards (like the ISO standards), apart from a list of about 150, are copyrighted for financial reasons.   There is no NDA, at all, for a published standard.

PDFs and ePubs are "licensed" to you, you may print one copy, but you may transfer to another device.  They are watermarked with the licencee name.

Printed copies are similar, but explicitly allow lending, you may not make any copies.  They are watermarked with the licencee name.

For all those cases where I have placed orders, the printed and PDF copies were the same price.  I am told the price is based on a per-page rate.

You can buy a single-user copy for a few hundred dollars, or multi-user (upto 10?) either from them direct or from any Member Country.  Every time we need a new ISO standard, people go looking for pricing on sites as diverse as ANSI, BIS (India), SPRING (Singapore), and Chile.  Then quick checks on exchange rates, before ordering.  Each country will re-issue the Standard, changing the title page with its logo and the local number; and adding a line saying it is identical to the ISO standard.

So, in my case, I have access to a printed copy with a colleague's (who I may never meet) name on it.  I can borrow it, show it to anyone, discuss it, and make notes from it.  The Librarian is absolutely OK with that, that is how I would audit a client's implementation.  This is a standard practice at Audit Firms.

I may not photocopy it, or copy out substantial texts by hand.  I can even, presumably, take it home, snail mail it to Eric, who reads it, and discusses it with David L. Mills, PhD (why not?), then mails it back to me.  This would comply with the licence requirements, although my office would have a fit: (Who is this esr?  Is he a client?  Why is he not speaking with our US office?  Do you even know if he is in US?  What do you mean, you have never met him?).

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Sanjeev Gupta
+65 98551208     http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane