European standards bodies are inaccessible to Open Source projects
blog.opensource.org
blog.opensource.org
Even working out which standards you should comply with is a nightmare - often they reference each other, so then you have a cascading web of standards compliance which never seems to end. And viewing each standard, even if it's just to see if it matters, costs €150.
The standards are often written by businesses in the industry - the authors are on their payroll. ISO isn't even paying these people.
Standards should be free and open, or have no legal weight.
Yes. And this discussion is much older than it seems. Way older
Oddly enough subpar chinese products are OK. Hint: Germany needs access to china’s markets.
What happens when a company wants to come up with a better charging method then USB C?
Bottom line: it won’t happen in Europe.
They probably will. It’s a huge and lucrative economic bloc. But they won’t be started there, or if they are, will be stunted by the fixed costs of compliance. For all the problems with our political process, America is good about exempting start-ups and small businesses from certain regulation.
You mean the proprietary connector that Apple would rather have die than turn into a free standard? Which it had over a decade to accomplish between the EU announcing its intention to enforce a standard and actually writing the law.
> What happens when a company wants to come up with a better charging method then USB C?
There is a renewal period of five years for the connection standard of choice. Why does this question get repeated every time USB comes up?
This is why we can't have nice things.
Also, Apple has easily shipped many billions of units with lightning connectors and dominates the profit margin of selling a smart phone. I think that qualifies as “mass adoption” regardless and they very intentionally control the lightning standard. I’m sure there’s many competitors who would haven chosen it over usbc before it became so ubiquitous if they could.
More than "technically."
Lots of devices had FireWire connections. In addition to my PowerBook, my Comcast cable box, my external archive drives from multiple brands, and my Sony camera had FireWire connectors. Many high-end televisions had them, too.
The notion that FireWire was an Apple-only thing is little more than a HN cliche.
This likely a major reason why it lost out to the royalty-free USB, despite technical advantages.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/apple-licensing-firewire-for-a-...
FireWire was better. Apple and high end PCs had them. If Apple created a better connector than USB C that cost more to include, it would never be accepted by Android manufacturers who want to sell shitty $60 phones.
Even Apple's consumer-grade basic computers had them. I was introduced to FireWire when my wife bought a MacBook in 2006.
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2012/03/14/ten_firewire_ha...
$2 for two ports would have been a tiny percent of the final retail price 15 years ago.
Today we're used to portable 4GB drives for $99. But back then, drives were more expensive.
According to the Wayback Machine†, a 1TB FireWire drive was almost $400. So those two ports would have been ½% of the retail price.
† https://web.archive.org/web/20080128203022/http://www.lacie....
Basically, BOM/COG is things you pay for that you pass on directly to the consumer. However, the retail price has to cover a bunch more than that so you can't compare the two directly. A good rule of thumb is ~2-20x markup depending on the profit margin you are targeting.
A $2 licensing fee in the BOM is thus probably closer to ~$14-40 retail. Considering how thin profit margins are, 3% of retail going to nothing but marketing is not nothing especially considering that Apple doesn't have to pay this fee and also getting a cut of every product you sell to boot. Think about it this way - frequently towards the end of the development cycle as you're heading towards mass manufacturing, companies will look to shave tens of dollars and be trying to find 10-20c here & there to add up to that. $3 is massive.
You see similar dynamics with MFI. It requires a special chip (space within the product, battery costs) and licensing fees (Apple gets a cut of every sale you make making your competitor product more expensive or less profitable). It's why none of the major tech companies have MFI in their products AFAIK. It cripples any competitor product you try to make (not to mention that you're further at Apple's whims around licensing agreements changing if you build your product around MFI).
I’m not saying that USB C is inferior. But if Apple did want to come up with a better port it couldn’t.
This goes back to when Apple was moving to Lightning, the EU wanted to mandate micro USB.
Licensing fees were $1 for historical legal reasons per SKU, for the first unit sold, and then 14 cents for each subsequent unit.
Still stupid, but nothing like what a lot of this thread is condemning.
.07 percent is not remotely close to "several" percent
We old people remember $5000 for first generation IBM PC.
So get off my lawn ;)
[1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/apple-licensing-firewire-for-a-...
Nobody on this thread claimed this, so I don't know why you have to make up your own straw man and start a fame war. Famebait is against HN rules.
Would other companies really use Lightning even if it were a standard? Did PC manufacturers embrace FireWire even though it was better? Sony did and Dell did on their high end computers.
For a time they seemed to, I had FireWire ports even on computers at the lower end of the price range. What I didn't have where FireWire based gadgets and going by Wikipedia that isn't surprising. FireWire style peer networking seems to force a lot of complexity onto peripherals, with every device being equal. USB on the other hand pushed most of the complexity to the host, making peripherals cheap and easy to implement. Given that I am not surprised that USB pushed firewire out, especially when after it came out that most FireWire implementations had significant security flaws.
A lot of companies in Eastern Europe were obliterated when joining the EU and our local market was flooded with goods made in the west since the local ones weren't "up to standard" anymore. Even today we still have a huge trade deficit with the west as we import far more than we export.
Not to mention that west european products are often of lower quality than in their home countries, and more expensive.
As for low-quality products from China - until recently, Chinese vendors didn't even sell directly to customers in Europe. Most of the garbage products were, and still are, western products, which are only made in China, because... everything is made in China. It's the world's 3D printer. Chinese manufacturers can make goods to arbitrarily high or low quality standards - it's up to the company that orders production to choose how much quality they want to pay for.
That is, if you see a shitty product made in China for a western company, don't blame China - it's the western company that chose to request production of low-quality garbage.
This was always the trade-off for letting Eastern countries in the bloc: they were meant to provide new markets and new labor for (largely German) established companies. In exchange, they got loads of money to raise their infrastructural standards and overall quality of life.
If these countries think they're not happy with the arrangement anymore, they're more than welcome to leave. Like what happened with Brexit, they would remove a number of political headaches, hence fostering deeper integration between remaining countries.
No. If you go to any supermarket in the east you'll find mostly German or French made products on the food shelves. A lot of the local made products became "illegal" after joining the EU. Now it's better and we have more local products but the trade deficit is still huge.
>political headaches
Funny how poor eastern countries not wanting to be abused by rich western ones and their corporations and using their legal voting rights in the EU, are considered "political headaches".
Ohh, poor rich western companies. How dares the est stand up for themselves and not bend over to their rich overlords?
The west should have realized that you can't have a balanced democratic union when some countries are constantly being milked and treated as second class citizens in a theoretically equalitarian union ruled by the rich for the rich.
> No.
Alright, I must have dreamed all that juicy delocalization that basically makes for a whole branch of academic studies nowadays...
> How dares the est stand up for themselves
Nobody denies anything to anyone, but western audiences are a bit tired of the lack of grace and gratefulness exhibited by areas that continue (and intend to continue) to be massive recipients of Union funds.
> when some countries are constantly being milked
Except nobody is being "milked" - every country in the Union experiences tradeoffs. France, Italy, and Spain benefit from financial stability but suffer from job losses; Germany benefits from economic growth while subsidizing the rest of the continent; and Eastern countries benefit from subsidies and job creation while struggling to build national champions. It's a give-and-take for everyone, which is why this continuous self-victimization exhibited by certain audiences is incredibly tiresome.
Pretty sure the eu is making them payments as a means to compensate for the job losses you mentioned that it created and for the trade tariffs they no longer charge when importing them sweet, subsidised, german cars.
This doesn't follow at all unless you somehow are able to tell that the poster to whom you reply didn't vote Remain. "Your fellow citizens bought into lies splattered on the side of a bus, shut up" is not the dunk you think it is.
> Pretty sure the eu is making them payments as a means to compensate for the job losses
How do these lies are even invented...?
Development payments are a mean to bring countries up to scratch. They are allocated with formulas that look at development potential per capita, which is why even struggling areas inside western countries (from Wales to Calabria to Northern Spain to Greece) receive them. It just so happens that Eastern countries receive disproportionate amounts because of the state they found themselves in after the end of the Soviet Bloc.
The European Community was built on the principle of solidarity, and those payments are one massive expression of such solidarity. Sadly, the largest recipients seem to avoid expressing any solidarity back in other areas.
The giveaway was commenting about gratefulness, lies and audiences, when my comment is strictly about policy and imbalance and what i suspect the reason may be within the EU. Somehow you dragged the whole west in a debate about policy that benefits west europe more than east and south europe.
The european community wasn't built out of solidarity, it was built as a mechanism to ensure we don't resort to barbarism again, as we did our entire history.
The armed conflicts of last century are the economic wars of today, at least within the eu.
Talking about “solidarity” and “recipients” is, i am sorry, amusing. I cant entertain this thought path any further simply because this is not a pub and we are not drunks.
You should read the Treaty of Rome before you try to act all mighty about stuff you clearly don't fully understand. The word solidarity is in the founding principles, and it actually comes even before "peace". The Treaty established the European Social Fund as well as the investment bank. Economic solidarity has always been the key policy to achieve progress in other areas. Most of the money the EU handles today, like yesterday, is used towards enacting that.
Everything else, i am sorry, is hot air (and yes, lies).
Claiming solidarity is in the “treaties” yet your reaction to east europe wanting change in policy is “leave if you don’t like it”. Such is the eu.
Economic solidarity is the lynchpin of the EU; it benefited Italy or Spain before, it's benefiting Eastern Europe now. Any country who wants to alter the current setup, will have to renounce this state of things. Surprise surprise, when push comes to shove, nobody wants to - every time funding is threatened, Eastern representatives fall in line.
It has become clear, even in this thread, that certain countries probably never shared the founding principles of the community, and bringing them in as quickly as it was done might have been premature. For that reason, a shrinkage around a more ideologically cohesive core becomes more and more attractive with time.
That is correct.
> Economic solidarity is the lynchpin of the EU; it benefited Italy or Spain before, it's benefiting Eastern Europe now.
In theory, but in practice that's not accurate. Modern day EU is far more corrupt and inefficient than when Spain joined.
> Surprise surprise, when push comes to shove, nobody wants to - every time funding is threatened, Eastern representatives fall in line.
A little bit similar to Italy falling in line around 2010, I believe, corruption, financial crime, fiscal irresponsibility etc where mentioned. I remember around the time there were frequent calls for PIGS to leave the EU since, unlike east europe, those countries nearly collapsed the project and the euro zone.
> For that reason, a shrinkage around a more ideologically cohesive core becomes more and more attractive with time.
A review of the current state of affairs is in order, but I doubt Italy will have much to say in any of this.
That's not arrogant at all, lol. Particularly when it's based on falsehoods like the ones stated above-thread.
> In theory, but in practice that's not accurate.
Er, no, that's still very much accurate.
Eastern countries are in the EU for the practical advantages, and those advantages are the result of the solidarity framework established in Rome.
> Modern day EU is far more corrupt and inefficient than when Spain joined.
Lol, citation needed.
> little bit similar to Italy falling in line around 2010
Absolutely. The country made sacrifices to stay in the Union, for practical and ideological reasons, and it's one of the main movers behind actual policy-making. Even just Mario Draghi did more for the Union than most Eastern politicians likely ever will.
> i doubt Italy will have much to say in any of this.
Whereas I'm sure the third largest market in the Union will have a say.
Facts are not arrogance and lies.
> Eastern countries are in the EU for the practical advantages, and those advantages are the result of the solidarity framework established in Rome.
There is no solidarity other than on paper, as the war in Ukraine has proven in its early days. It wasn't until the US, UK and east Europe pressured western europe to get off it's backside and something about it. Particularly since european "solidarity" meant that east european calls for taming russia have been ignored and worse western europe financed russia and forced an unhealthy reliance on their resources.
> Lol, citation needed.
Quatargate springs to mind. Unheard of in the early days of the EC.
> Absolutely. The country made sacrifices to stay in the Union, for practical and ideological reasons, and it's one of the main movers behind actual policy-making. Even just Mario Draghi did more for the Union than most Eastern politicians likely ever will.
Insignificant to efforts made by east EU to rebuild countries, political systems and social structures.
> Whereas I'm sure the third largest market in the Union will have a say.
East Europe is the second largest economy of europe. Larger than nort or south europe. If the trend continues, it may even revert to pre 70s levels - a rather likely outcome - where it was the largest.
Look, i understand you are upset that your country and region is being overtaken, but be fair and play the game. No need for emotions and tantrums, they won't change facts.
Great then, let's talk about the south of Italy and it's development. Everyone from the south of Italy I met in Europe said they'd rather be expats in EU than in the North of Italy thanks to they way the north treat them. That's how Eastern Europeans feel in the EU sometimes. People don't like to be treated as second class citizens.
>It just so happens that Eastern countries receive disproportionate amounts because of the state they found themselves in after the end of the Soviet Bloc.
Kind of like the solidarity of the post-WW2 Marshall plan Italy received after siding with the Nazis? Is it equally disproportionate, more, or less?
>Sadly, the largest recipients seem to avoid expressing any solidarity back in other areas.
What kind of solidarity are you thinking of receiving? Are the the minimum wage slaves from Eastern Europe working in Italian and German nursing homes and agriculture fields working in conditions below legal norms for wages below the minimum in order to keep the nursing system and cheap supermarket prices afloat, enough to balance the books?
Don't come to me, an European in Brexit Britain, hailing from a country with one of the largest and most-enduring economic diasporas in the world, to talk about the condition of migrants or second-class "feelings".
The stuff you mention is largely bullshit and jokes. There has been no discrimination of Southern Italians since the late '80s, when African migrants became the (easier) target for that sort of treatment. Whereas I'm now on a fucking register and I can lose all my rights with the stroke of a pen by some populist asshole. I swear, EU27 folks don't know how good they have it.
> Is it equally disproportionate, more, or less?
The Marshall Plan lasted 3 years, Italy got around a billion USD. Over 20 years, Eastern Europe likely got several multiples of that - Poland alone received 11bn per year not long ago, so even adjusting for inflation the Eastern bloc is probably way ahead by now.
> What kind of solidarity are you thinking of receiving?
Help with migratory flows and refugees resettlement, to balance demographic pressures. Help with stemming tax evasion (I'm looking at you, Slovenia). Help that costs little and would benefit everyone in the long run.
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/dual-quality-food-...
Claims east europeans “displaced jobs” from west europe yet east europeans have been forced to migrate to western europe due to a lack of jobs. How have jobs been moved to east europe when people leave precisely because there are no jobs?
They also claim that east europe was meant to provide “cheap labour” for richer nations in the eu - basically admitting the plan has always been to keep those people poor so they can work in factories. Somehow they should be thankful for that.
The list continues and is a good indication of the underlying issues that plague european “solidarity”.
What was initially sold as a continuation of the marshal plan has taken a very dark european shape where if you dont like it you are told to get out.
> basically admitting the plan has always been to keep those people poor
That's not what delocalization does; in the long run it inevitably leads to wage growth in target countries - it happened even in China. The "plan", or rather intuition of some political players of the time, was simply to exploit lower salaries as long as it was possible, knowing full well that it wouldn't be forever.
> What was initially sold as a continuation of the marshal plan has taken a very dark european shape.
As I said, nobody is forced to stay in. If those countries stay in, it's because they know which side their bread is buttered.
Instead east europe demands a level playing field so it doesnt have to rely on eu funding, partly needed due to misguided policies.
If Italy doesnt like this then it can leave. East europe is increasingly more relevant.
vs
"East europe is increasingly more relevant"
You appear to have some cognitive dissonance.
Never said that.
I've never used that word, that's your own insecurities talking. What people want is not obedience, is respect: respect for the founding principles of the community they joined, and respect for the solidarity that the founders extend every day to them.
Instead, certain elements in Eastern Europe demand more and more, without ever giving anything back.
> If Italy doesnt like this then it can leave.
Sure, but why should we leave a house we built, that we still fundamentally believe in, and that we know we benefit from in various ways...? Obviously we won't. It's much more likely that we will simply continue to work to improve the house rules.
> East europe is increasingly more relevant.
Lol. I'm not sure you noticed, but Visegrad is dead. In EU institutions, the great killer is isolation. The more you beat your chest, the less you will get.
Please name me 3 foodstuffs you have in your kitchen made in some Eastern EU country.
>You don't have brands but have jobs, often displaced from Western countries.
Goods made in Eastern EU didn't displace jobs from the West. French and German unemployment were record lows. Southern EU had big unemployment but that was due to their own economic issues, no factories from Greece or Spain moved to Eastern Europe.
>they were meant to provide new markets and new labor for (largely German) established companies. In exchange, they got loads of money to raise their infrastructural standards and overall quality of life.
In exchange they also had to suffer a huge increase in cost of living, food and energy prices to the point we're paying German prices at Eastern EU wages. Most of our energy companies are German or French owned, so the profits from the increase prices we paid went to them. So are our banks. The profits made by western banks also far outpace the ones made in their home countries since they offer higher interest rates and charge higher fees than what they do back home to their own countrymen. So are our oil and gas companies, all owned by western enterprises and profits go there.
Yeah, we're getting hundreds of millions from the EU and sending back billions in corporate profits. Heck of a deal. From some angles it looks more like economic colonialism.
How is it my fault that your stuff tastes bad? ;)
> no factories from Greece or Spain moved to Eastern Europe.
That's because they largely didn't exist in the first place; whereas they definitely did from Italy, which you carefully avoided mentioning, or the UK.
> In exchange they also had to suffer a huge increase in cost of living, food and energy prices
That's just capitalism in action, and it's the same for pretty much anyone on the continent at the moment. (oh, actually, it's worse here in UK, with sustained double-digit inflation, eye-watering energy prices that nobody else pays in Europe, and a house market used as reserve currency by rich foreigners).
Damn, that’s some high quality trolling right there.
This is the definition of colonialism. Expect the deficit to continue as your state is a colony.
I grew up on Maui. The pineapple & sugar cane were farmed there with inexpensive labor. The raw materials were lightly processed & shipped to the mainland to be manufactured. The sugar & to a lesser extent canned pineapple (it was easy to get fresh pineapple) were then sold at retail to the residents of Maui. HC&S (the sugar company) controlled the agricultural fresh water, so no agricultural competition could arise.
The local residents were not happy & conducted social, religious, & political action which included adhering to indigenous cultural practices to gain some concessions.
If you study the history of Hawaii & how its monarchy was overthrown in a coup by US business interests with the help of the US military (to protect the interests of US citizens of course) & the events since, you will have a set of tools to keep what is rightfully yours. Of course Hawaii is now a US State with a large military base & munitions. Aquifers are polluted by jet fuel from the US Navy which it still has not taken appropriate action for. The struggle continues...
But to your point specifically not being a member of the eu is equal to being embargoed or sanctioned if you are a european country. It covers so much of the continent that it should be a right not a privilege. Either it gets dismantled or is free and equal for all.
Because we learned later that the "free market" might be free as in freedom, but not free as in beer, it's actually "pay to win".
It's a palce that flavors the established players with capital (the rich countries with big conglomerates) to easily buy whatever they want from the places without capital (the poorer countries), while having enough expensive moats that price out the poorer countries from doing the same in the richer ones. Case in point: the common energy market.
The "free market" doesn't benefit the consumers in the poorer countries in the sectors of essentials stuff needed for living: healthcare, food, energy, housing.
1. USB 2.0 rated at 3A 2. USB 2.0 rated at 5A 3. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 3A 4. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 5A 5. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 3A 6. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 5A 7. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 3A 8. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 5A
What percentage of customers will be impacted when they aren't using a compatible cable that looks like it should work? Also the whole master/slave hardware confusion might be a step back: https://superuser.com/questions/1140136/how-does-usb-c-affec...
That except is doing a lot of work. Picking up a USB-C cable only to find out it charges slower than the device burns battery, or only capable of transferring data at sub USB 2.0 speed when I need to transfer a lot of data are both real world scenarios I have encountered multiple times. Even got a charging cable for >400GB data transfer at an Apple Store Genius Bar once.
You have to try hard for that, as any compliant cable is able to pass 60W, which is what I can comfortably charge my laptop with. You only need e-markers for going higher than that, which is perfectly reasonable as that's plenty of power already.
Cables with no CC lines cannot be called "USB-C cables". They're not complaint at all. They're just broken, and it's no surprise that broken hardware fails to work as expected.
There are several universal chargers you can buy that support all standards under the sun from all manufacturers.
That's a non issue outside of HN mind games people here like to play to draw their own straw men.
People love freaking out about the profusion of USB specs available, but the overall experience is magically great. Just stellar.
Usb has recently gotten a bit better about their new on-cable markings to make things clearer. But overall the baseline is so good.
The braun shavers are also the fastest charging electronic devices I own. So what's the problem? Like apple, the charger may not be compatible with the older generation. So how about they force companies to bundle an adaptor that can work with the older generations. Or better yet, release an adaptor that lets me charge my phone with my shaver charger:)
There isn’t one specific example, it’s the sheer amount, and in some cases the stupidity, that are problematic.
Sure we all want to live in a utopia but at the moment that utopia is causing mass displacement of economic refugees from east and south europe to nw europe and a constant reliance on eu funding, while the industrial base of those parts of europe has to constantly adapt to new legislation made in countries that already meet the requirements. And this constant game of catching up is in my view intentional protectionism.
But also establishing new standards is also the standard playbook for European industry. There are plenty of examples that are a mere google search away. Two that I find especially annoying are the decision to switch to 50hz AC power instead of using the original 60hz and the decision to create a broadcast TV encoding.
Subpar Chinese products are not officially OK, they're just not really stopping individual packages from AliExpress. They generally aren't being resold through EU retailers.
For me, the lack of any de-minimis rules in the requirements is the killer. EU law does not recognize the concept of a "small business". It might be both viable and a good idea for extra safety checks for something where a million units are being sold, but it isn't for a few dozen.
Every single package I've ordered since then across four different EU countries and multiple Chinese suppliers has resulted in it being held until a fee was paid.
Previously, stuff below a certain value was "free".
Physical Engineering standards serve a different purpose than software standards. Engineering standards are a social contract we all buy into because of the incredibly cost and complexity of designing physical infrastructure.
Software is not constrained by the same standards. It's alright if the firmware of a coffee machine and a cell phone run on a different standard, but it's going to cause problems if each of my sockets has a different grounding.
Nobody on this thread said a word against standardization. It's really important. You are replying for some comment that isn't there.
also, it's completely okay if no code had to be changed
also there are quality assurance and process related standards, that are about documentation...
and let's not forget that a government can usually require that the vendor sign paperwork, which makes sure the officers of the vendor are criminally liable
... I'm not in favor of them, nor in favor of spending millions on legal and documentation fees, but without knowing more it's yet another "public procurement bad" story (which is completely believable! I mean 1M EUR compliance cost nowadays is not that unusual)
At some point some lawmakers (under the influence of some company such as Cap Gemini or Atos) passed a law to force notaries to use only software with that particular stamp.
The problem is that it's typically the sort of standard that should be applied to a particular organisation and workflow, through an auditing process, instead of a global, upfront stamp that is really a way to do gatekeeping, not actually enforcing data safety and security.
Just make it the law.
It’s even more dodgy. Saiglobal had something of a contract in perpetuity to sell standards that were created by standards Australia. Someone thought that was a good deal back when. They recently sued to get out of it and now can sell directly and have a pretty affordable subscription model. But even then it’s stupid. The standards themselves are developed by volunteer committees mostly, and standards Australia is sitting on a massive cash fund.
We recently had to design some coupling plates for a job and needed to check allowable clearances that were specified in a standard. Problem is the bloody standard has 20 parts to it, each cost $150 each. I don’t even know which part I need!
Anyway makes me angry thinking about.
TLDR: standards should be free
(*Being sarcastic BTW. There's nothing more infuriating to me than the twin Industrial Complexes that have developed around Compliance and Publishing)
AFAIK, each one of those is designed to be enough to cover for all their real expenses.
On the surface, the concept of copyrighted laws sounds ridiculous. After all, works of the government are not copyrightable, so why should the law be? However, Georgia's idea was essentially: because it was done by a private company, the copyright was enforceable.
In 2013, Public.Resource.Org challenged this concept by publishing the text in its entirety, and was subsequently sued by Georgia in 2015. The Northern District of Georgia ruled in favor of Georgia in 2017. After an appeal to the 11th Circuit, in 2018, it was overturned in favor of Public.Resource.Org. In 2020,[1] the Supreme Court sided with the 11th Circuit, ending the debacle. The ruling held that "works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated" are uncopyrightable.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Code_of_Georgia_Annot...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_v._Public.Resource.Org....
...and the rest of the world, judging by the comments. And also, let's not forget the EU is a collection of countries.
Well, sort of. But why is that relevant?
Really, I'm surprised there's anyone left who doesn't know about EVS (the Estonian Centre for Standards and Accreditation)[1]
They have a nice English website, and you don't have to have any ties whatsoever to Eestonia, or Europe.
The customer service people speak perfect English too if you have any questions.
Just make sure you're looking at the price for the EN version and not the ISO version.
EN just means the regionally adopted version of the standard. For all intents and purposes EN and ISO are basically identical.
When did I say it was free ?
I was replying to the OP who was complaining about paying 150. I pointed out that most people go to EVS these days where they can get it for a fraction of the cost.
Frankly I'm sick and tired of the modern freetard mentality where people feel they are somehow entitled to the work of others free of charge.
Whilst yes I agree the source 150 cost is high, the fractional cost available via EVS is not. And if your job is dependent on formal standards compliance, then its merely a cost of doing business no different to an internet connection and should be accounted for accordingly.
These are documents that should be on the laptops of every shift lead, maintenance tech, mechanical designer, manufacturing engineer, robot programmer, and controls programmer at industrial plants worldwide. These documents being free would not just make websites easier to use, they'd make human beings safer and reduce the number of industrial accidents that occur. And yet in the hundreds of facilities I've been in and hundreds of customers and vendors I've worked with, I can count on one hand the number of people who had a copy of even one of these documents. The vast majority, in practice, makes do with the regurgitated Powerpoints from various "safety training" presentations that have screenshots of a few tables and critical language.
There's an enormous river of prosperity flowing through society. Everyone involved just wants to dip out or siphon off a little bit, what they imagine to be their fair share, or what they think they can convince people ought to be their fair share, and unfortunately, that includes people like the standards bodies. If they published their standards more freely, the total volume of that river would grow enormously, but they would get less of it, so they selfishly don't do that.
Which is why, when the NFPA (private org) fire code is mandated, you can use a really shitty web based viewer to view it for free, or pay the normal $200 for a hard copy or pdf. All stemming from a lawsuit.
It's interesting the EU isn't the same
Since group licensing also tends to charge by # of people with access, beancounters naturally silo access to this critical safety standard, with many of the thousands of engineers who work on any particular vehicle designing to a standard they've never read for themselves.
Standards should simply be freely available. It takes time and effort to write them, but the consequences of limited access are borne by society.
I’ve likened closed building codes to the way the Catholic Church ran in the Middle Ages. Only the clergy could read Latin and found they could spew all sorts of nonsense culminating in “if you want a guaranteed trip to Heaven, pay us.” Which sounds a lot like, “if you want to pass building inspection, pay us.”
Organizations (and lawmakers who enable them) that engage in this sort of sanctioned rent-seeking should be dismantled and we should not tolerate them in our society.
It would be of the EU’s interest to make all standards available for free or a nominal fee to certain types of organisations : open source, startups, something like: if you make less than X-million euros in turnover per year, you get a license.
Since that’s probably not happening any time soon, the pdf could find their way into z-library, as an alternative…
Nah, but gotta protect their big business I guess.
It would have to be something like a revolving body of FOSS luminaries who are willing to take the high level meetings and a smaller body of administrators and presumably some voting. I mean you can speak to debian, to the PSF etc.
Ultimately, FOSS and regulators are aligned in places where regulators and firms are opposed. That opens up possibilities.
Quick Ducking and I found FSF Europe: https://fsfe.org/
I'm guessing the European Pirate Party also engages with this topic: https://european-pirateparty.eu/
It might seem silly, but I think it bears repeating that not all countries in Europe are part of the European union.
“Europe” doesn’t mean “the EU” in any language, though maybe it will shift and mean that someday.
Same with Africa. These may be relevant to you but are in no way universal
Near East was traditionally the former Ottoman Empire [1]. It’s why Turkey straddles Europe (and Egypt North Africa). It’s a synonym for the Middle East more in contemporary American English than British.
I don't think I've ever seen someone use "Africa" in a way that excludes the Sahara?
Most commercial projects use open source as a core and integral part of their offering, for which they would have to maintain this software as liable corporate projects.
My assumption is that this would result in a non-trivial price jump for software.
Edit: from the linked article https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/eu-cra-secure-coding-solut...
> The extremely short version: The EU is going to task a standardisation body to write a document that tells everyone marketing products and software in the EU how to code securely. This to further the EU Essential Cybersecurity Requirements. For critical software and products, EU notified bodies (which until now have mostly done physical equipment and process certifications) will do audits to determine if code and products adhere to this standard. And if not, there could be huge fines.
Especially the part about certifications from TÜV and Dekra is so funny. Those institutions have absolutely no idea what they're doing esp. in all things digital.
This might be fearmongering but I'm seeing us already getting nudged to some kind of Java EE standards that can nicely be taught in universities, applied in public and private institutions in dysfunctional ways and finally nicely be certified by aforementioned certification bodies. What a world.
No kidding, what public bodies need is not appointed executionaries for corporate strategies.
While obviously not everything must or can be open source, it is a vital ingredient of modern digitial democracies.
So until you see a politician commit to a repo you can assume that there is a huge gap between what we need and what the political class has been trained to deliver.
It is often less visually appealing, but at least you have the guarantee to be able to build with a reasonable amount of effort real-life alternatives.
It is the same with open source software.
That's only about the technical aspect, then you have the "legal" aspect: you will need to perform lobbying and to have lawyers.
Big Tech has, literaly, not money limit, keep that in mind. There is no "competitive" anything here.
As an example, rules that prevent phone subscriber lock-in and makes it easy to switch provider, those constrain the possibilities of the providers, but at the same time they facilitate fierce competition over end-user prices - possibly creating a better market by creating a good playing field for the competition to play out.
Do you need/want a centralized authority dictating requirements for quality, safety, and interoperability? When and how much?
My experience with the EUDI Wallet have been less good: there has been some very good work within the EC to use modern OSS tooling (markdown > Word Documents) but then they have standardised on using the Mobile Driver License, a specification which is hidden behind an ISO paywall.
Given the enormous sums spent by the EC and Member States on these systems, everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - should be built on open standards.
The EC/Member States are more than capable of setting up an Apache Foundation-like to handle all of this. I don't know what is lacking?
it is by design
once you realise the EU is set up to prioritise the "Mittelstand" over all other parts of the economy everything makes sense
How does this thing apply to online services and stuff that is offered as a service in general?
Membership for FOSS developers: $0 Membership for anyone even tangentiality related to a massive corp: Call us for pricing details.
Fund the whole organization by gouging megacorps.