Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

The article makes reference to the need for Standards organizations to charge for standards so continue fundind the development of those standards. I've contributed/am contributing to three ANSI standards and we're not compensated for that work. In fact we have to spend money out of our own (or our firms') pockets to work on these - I'm spending $1,000 to travel to Washington DC next week for a meeting of one of these standards groups.

When complete, these standards will probably sell for $80-$100 a pop and I'll see none of that. ANSI as an organization will contribute by providing some editing and review (although the bulk of that work will be done by unpaid peer reviewers) and it's necessary for them to charge a nominal fee to support their work, but having seen this process from the inside, I don't see where this money is going.

We need standards, but the gatekeeper aspect is a sham. When contributors start getting paid for our efforts, maybe I'll change my mind.

That sounds EXACTLY like the scientific publishing industry. What is the motivation for you to do free work for these parasites?

He can sell his experience to companies looking to implement those standards? Companies get a solution to the coordination problem of creating standards in the first place?

What is the motivation for you to do free work for these parasites?

In most cases, both in scientific publishing and in writing standards, people aren't doing free work, they're getting paid by their employers. So the next question is what is the motivation of these employer to pay for you to work for these parasites. In most cases the answer is a mixture of prestige, advertising, influence and early access.

The typical situation in science is that you're expected to cover "100%" of your time through some combination of grants and teaching. There is no specific allocation for "professional service", but you're expected to do it anyway.

With standards bodies, it's common that some representative of each organization is required to attend meetings to retain voting privileges. So if the organization wants a chance to influence the Standard, they need to send people and pay for it. One reason is prestige/advertising, but a Standard also enables tactical advantages, e.g., (a) include feature X that lets us showcase our hardware or (b) prevent feature Y that would be expensive for us to implement.

As I wrote, we need standards, and those standards to a lot of good in terms of setting best-practices and documenting procedures than can result in repeatable, robust results. Being able to point to standards compliance is also helpful in reducing the effort involved in describing and justifying procedures/designs.

The problem is in the dissemination of the standards. Of course folks can try to implement and promulgate standards themselves, but IME they have a hard time getting traction without the "blessing" of a major organization.

And to be honest, contributing to a standard looks good on a resume.

" and those standards to a lot of good in terms of setting best-practices and documenting procedures than can result in repeatable, robust results."

No

Especially the more closed/monetized ones.

Good standards are open and developed together with an implementation of it.

And don't get me started on HL7

Nothing in what I said pointed toward closed standards, and I wasn't referring to closed standards. In my field (acoustics/noise & vibration control) we generally don't have closed standards and rely on standards to produce results that we have confidence in.

I should have gotten a hint from your username.

I was imagining one thing, but apparently it's something else. What you said makes sense in your field (and in others), and of course, it's non-closed standarts

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