Hi,
This a very serious issue - US ANSI has proposed to ISO CPSG that
ISO now charge ROYALTIES to _all_ software developers who embedd
code lists from any of the following three ISO standards in their
commercial software produocts:
ISO 639 - Language Codes
ISO 3166 - Country Codes
ISO 4127 - Currency Codes
W3C and NCITS (the Inforomation Technology standards member body
of US ANSI) have sent strong letters of protest to ISO (see below
W3C note and referenced links).
The NCITS letter quotes the ANSI to ISO CPSG proposal (in part)
as follows:
"Software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission
to embed ISO codes in their products for resale will be asked to
purchase each code in electronic format and pay either an annual
fee or a one time fee and any applicable maintenance fees required
(to be further discussed with CPSG by correspondence)"
I'll post updates as they appear on W3C Internationalization list.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald
High North Inc
-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Daly [mailto:janet at w3.org]
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 7:55 PM
To: www-international at w3.org
Subject: Information on W3C Letter to ISO wrt Licensing Fee Proposal for
use of ISO codes
Dear Readers,
The text below is based on a letter sent yesterday to the W3C Membership
regarding a recent proposal to ISO to charge licensing fees for the
commercial use of several ISO codes [0]. The codes under consideration
and the possible impacts of this proposal on W3C specifications and the
Web are summarized in the text below.
W3C will be following the matter closely, and will keep the list
informed of developments.
Best regards,
Janet Daly
============================================================
The Hypertext Coordination Group (representing the W3C's HTML, CSS, MMI,
DOM, I18N, and Voice Browser Activities), along with W3C Member
organizations, told us they believe that a swift, firm response from W3C
is needed. A poll of the W3C Advisory Board over the past 24 hours has
also produced clear support for such action. The W3C Advisory Board
further recommended that the full W3C Membership be alerted to the
situation and of the possibility to respond to national ISO member
organizations.
Below is the text of an email that we sent on Thursday 18 September to
Dr. Oliver Smoot, President of ISO. The letter was sent as Dr. Smoot
informed us that the topic will be on the agenda of the ISO Council this
coming Saturday 20 September.
NCITS has also sent a response to this proposal to ANSI [1].
If you wish to contact your national ISO member organization to register
your opinion on the ISO proposal, here is the contact information for
each of the ISO members:
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/aboutiso/isomembers/MemberList.MemberSummary?MEMBE
RCODE=10
[0] ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group Meets at ANSI
http://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?admin=1&articleid=398
[1] INCITS CONTRIBUTION TO ANSI CONCERNING THE AVAILABILITY OF ISO CODES
http://www.ncits.org/archive/2003/in031008/in031008.htm
=========================================================
Text of message to Oliver Smoot
=========================================================
To: Dr. Oliver Smoot, President, International Organization for
Standardization
Dear Dr. Smoot,
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wishes to express its deep concerns
over a recent proposal by the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group
(CPSG) to charge fees for the commercial use of ISO codes such as ISO
639 (language codes), ISO 3166 (country codes), and ISO 4127 (currency
codes).
These and similar codes are widely used on the Web. In particular the
language and country codes are of direct interest to W3C and the users
of W3C Recommendations in the context of HTTP, HTML and XML and various
other technologies. Language and country codes currently provide a
single, standard way of identifying languages (and locales) throughout
the Web. Multilingual Web sites and Web pages, as well as
internationalization and localization features, would be particularly
affected.
Any charges for the use of these standards are going to lead to
fragmentation, delay in deployment, and in effect a lack of
standardization. In particular, those users who depend upon
multi-lingual or non-English language services will suffer.
In their considerations, the CPSG notes "the necessity for a number
of ISO standards to be published as databases". Web technology today
allows publication and reuse of data at a small fraction of the
costs a few years ago. If it is the case that the costs of maintaining
these databases is beyond ISO's capacity to cover, we would suggest that
ISO open a discussion with the larger user community about how these
services might be hosted in a manner that covers these costs.
Given that this policy would have profound impact not only on ISO,
but also on industry and users of the Web at large, we urge ISO to
further consider this policy and its broader implications and
consequences, and to reassure the community as quickly as possible
that there will be no charges for the use of these standards.
Best regards,
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director
Steven R. Bratt, W3C Chief Operating Officer
--
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Janet Daly, Head of Communications
MIT/CSAIL NE43-342
200 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
voice: +1.617.253.5884
fax: +1.617.258.5999
http://www.w3.org/janet at w3.org