Source for ISA standard

T
Some ISA standards committees are moving in that direction. SP88 is an example. This committee will meet in mid November to decide if it wants to do a Part 3 of the standard. If the committee agrees that we want to do a Part 3 standard (I believe that they do) and if we can pick a topic for that part, we have already agreed that we will
write the standard over the web. Doing this may not totally eliminate face-to-face meetings, but it should make them few and far between.

Tom
 
W
Okay, why don't you think about the problem, as you have with the Linux PLC, and come up with a suggested solution, and suggest it?

Everybody else try that too.

Together we will figure out a way to be able to support the costs of development and make standards available to whoever needs them.

The best way to get everybody to use ISA standards, in my view, is for them to be freely available.

How to get there, is the problem.

Walt Boyes
 
> Another question:
>
> What happens when ISA standards get quoted or paraphrased in the source
> code documentation? Is this legitimate?

I would think this would work the same way as a reference to any other copyrighted document. A direct quote or close paraphrase should be attributed to the source, including number, name, and date of the standard and a paragraph or page reference, with ISA as the publisher.

Diana Bouchard

*******************************************************************************************************
Diana C. Bouchard
Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican)
Process Control Group Chair, Books Advisory &
570 St Johns Boulevard Oversight Committee
Pointe Claire Quebec H9R 3J9 Canada VP Elect-Elect
phone: (514) 630 4100 x2376 fax: (514) 630 4120 ISA Publications Department
email: [email protected]
 
R

Rob Hulsebos Philips CFT

>Together we will figure out a way to be able to support the costs of
>development and make standards available to whoever needs them.

What is the "cost of development" of a standard? In a committee there are people active. Their companies pay their hours, expenses, travel, hotel. The standardisation committee only pays the secretariat, etc. and sometimes even that is hosted by one of the companies involved.

When I buy a standard, (not only ISA, but from others as well) I consider it reasonable to pay for the multiplication: the paper or the CDROM. The standardisation organisation does not pay back the price of the document bought to the companies that helped developing it. So I wonder
why all these standards have to be so expensive.

Rob Hulsebos
 
G

Greg Goodman

make the standards, as written, freely available. the ISA can recoup the development costs by providing added value in the form of training, publishing books on how to apply the standards, charging for certification of compliance with a standard, etc. (i'm not sure how high the development costs could be, given the volunteer nature of the participants and the labor-intensive nature of the task.)

it's true that the standards are dense, heavy reading, not readily accessible to people who haven't time to invest in mastering arcana.
but if the standards were free, i'd expect to see a lively discourse in "cliff notes" style handbooks and cheat sheets, mini-tutorials, etc.

my (possibly naive) two cents.

--
Greg Goodman
Chiron Consulting
[email protected] -- http://www.swbell.net/chironsw -- (713) 869-6876
 
R

Ralph Mackiewicz

I hope Walt won't mind me preempting his response to this:

> > Anybody can join a standards committee. No one need be a member of
> > ISA to do that, and about half of our Standards volunteers are in
> > fact, not members of ISA.
>
> Walt -- Is there an online location where members of the public can
> apply to join a standards creation organization? I recently sent an
> email on this subject but it was returned by the target company's
> server as unavailable.

I would suggest that you go to the ISA web site (http://www.isa.org) and click on standards. you can easily find a list of all the standards activities that are active. Some of these standards have email lists in which the committee members discuss the standard. Contacts for several committee members are usually listed in addition to an ISA staff contact. It is pretty easy to get involved.

> Furthermore, why doesn't ISA make the standards creation process
> totally or at least largely online? I see no reason why this can't be
> so. By creating an online community (in the real sense of the word,
> not just a subscribed list) there are several advantages that ISA
> would reap:

Much of the standards process of ISA, and other groups, is already done on-line. However, face-to-face meetings between people are still
occasionally necessary in order to resolve some issues in a timely manner. From what I have seen of the SP95 process you can actively participate, contribute, and influence the standard without attending the meetings. I don't think that SP95 is much different from other ISA activities: the participants seem to welcome constructive help
from wherever it comes.

> If this were to be realized (*warning* heavy initial PERL writing
> overhead) I would suggest that the community be populated by people
> using aliases. The use of aliases helps to keep attention off
> personalities and on the facts. It also helps to maintain impartiality
> and is cement for the identity of the community.

Aliases might be a good idea for IRC chat boards, but not standards. Anonymity will not focus activities on facts or help cement the
"identity of community". I would think anonymity has the exact opposite effect. IMHO personal knowledge of the people you deal with is essential in building trust. Trust is essential for all compromise. And compromise is essential to the standards process.

Regards,
Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.
 
That is great that you are doing them in web format. Now when you are done just make the final web document freely accessable. I will be looking for SP88 to be a simple web click away.<br>
<br>
When I mentioned how the original RFC process for Internet standards someone made the statement that the standard changed while people were trying to use it. That wasn't the case. Making standards free and easy to access on the Internet<br>
is what I am talking about. That has nothing to do with allowing people to start working on an unfinished standard. That can happen anytime someone has access to a pre-released standard.
 
C

Curt Wuollet

I'm thinking............

Really, my thinking goes way beyond that. This industry really needs to get their act (I cleaned that up) together on standards or be rendered
irrelevent by those that do. The current situation with 50 incompatible ways to solve each problem is a paragon of inefficiency and waste. That shows up in the pricing, distribution, quality, really every facet. I know of no other industry that will tolerate this total refusal to standardize and act in the interest of it's customers. The whole fieldbus fiasco is a prime
example of total non-cooperation and competition at any cost. Years and years of petty devisiveness with a conclusion that is laughable at best. How can we credibly advise modern manufacturing that is several orders of magnitude more efficient and standardized if this rediculous
childish, NIH attitude and competition on every front but value continues.

Automation is being threatened by companies internal IS and CS structure simply because what these guys propose makes more sense. They buy equipment in bulk and it works together. I couldn't be at all surprised if thay can do a better job cheaper simply because they have better tools.
We have already seen the start of this in the pressure to use Ethernet. The cost of hiring talent and developing custom solutions is way too
close to the cost of solving interoperabiliy issues and incompatibilities with "off the shelf" solutions from the automation vendors. And these
trends are visible in the rise of DAQ companies and "do it yourself" automation vendors, yet the established vendors continue to fiercly defend
an indefensible position that you should use only their product line and the type of "just works" networking the rest of the world enjoys is quite
impossible with automation.

I would hope that ISA would be leading the charge, we need a strong standards organization to rationalize this whole mess when the status
quo collapses under the weight of their own blindness and averice. One would hope that they read the writing on the wall and effect change
before this comes to pass, but history would suggest otherwise.

Regards
Curt Wuollet, Wide Open Technologies

Free, Open, and user oriented Automation? see www.linuxplc.org.
 
W
Here's the quick answer. It costs well over twice what ISA recoups to produce standards. We are not sure we can sell enough books, cheat sheets, etc. to be able to offset those costs. We certainly will be trying to.

That's what we're trying to figure out: Can we make enough money from publications _related to_ standards, and seminars and training _related to_
standards to be able to give up the money we make from selling the standards themselves?

If the answer is yes, we'll stop charging for standards in a New York Minute.

Walt Boyes
Vice President Elect, Publications Department
ISA the Instrumentation Systems and Automation society
 
W
Rob Hulsebos wonders:
> When I buy a standard, (not only ISA, but from >others as well) I consider it reasonable to pay >for the multiplication: the paper or the CDROM. >The standardisation organisation does not
>pay back the price of the document bought to the >companies that helped developing it. So I wonder
> why all these standards have to be so expensive.

First of all, your premise is just flat wrong.

Companies rarely help the price of developing a standard these days. Most of the members of ISA standards committees are NOT supported by their
companies, and in some cases (more than just a few) companies have viewed the time devoted to standards committees as a CLM (career-limiting move).

We are looking at whether companies can be induced to fund standards activities by contribution to the Instrument Standards Foundation. So far, the answer is indeterminate.

So, ISA pays for the infrastructure, whether physical (meeting rooms, staff support, paper, printing, distribution, etc.) or digital (standards committee listservs, web space, web administration costs, staff support, etc.).

As I have said before in this forum, and people just seem to blow by it in the drive to get free standards, ISA recoups about half the cost of
supporting standards.

IEEE, as I understand it, is in about the same place, as are most of the ANSI/IEC standard making bodies, other than those which are direct
government agencies.

So, Rob, how are you going to get your company to shoulder its weight in the standards making process?

Walt Boyes
Vice President Elect Publications Department,
ISA the Instrumentation Systems and Automation Society
 
W
> That is great that you are doing them in web >format. Now when you are done just make the >final web document freely accessable. I will be >looking for SP88 to be a simple web click away.

Maybe I should be taking a collection???

I want people on this list who have asked for free standards to stand up and tell me how they are going to help ISA pay for the development of them. Let's be accountable, friends.

I'll start it off.

"My name is Walt, and I want free standards.

As Vice President of Publications at ISA, I am going to push us in the direction of tying our book publishing and electronic publishing efforts
more closely to standards development, putting out books that are relevant tie-ins in a timely fashion."

Who's next?

Walt Boyes
Vice President Elect, Publications Department
ISA, the Instrumentation systems and automation society
 
E
Well, I know that the NEC comes in a small, cheap paperback that just gives the rules. It also comes in a much larger, more expensive hard cover
version that has lots of application examples. I bought the big version, but only after using the cheap version for a year or so. I was willing to
pay for the extra convenience after dealing with the stripped down version. I never would have bought the expensive book first.

Let us have very cheap access to the standards and we'll see the need to buy the big books.

I have attended ISA training in the past. Excellent class! However, the cost has kept me from attending any more, since the cost per class was typically more than my training budget for the year with my previous employer.

Getting people into using the standards by letting them go for the cost of
duplication/mailing is the way to sell the more expensive support items.

FWIW,

Ed

Speaking for me, not for Starbucks. . .
 
R

Ralph Mackiewicz

I'm a little surprised at this kind of question. The cost to procure intellectual property is never simply the cost to produce a copy of it. Operating like this is a road to bankruptcy. While we might argue about the productivity of the ISA as a standards organization (and I'm sure that this will improve with Walt Boyes involvement) it is simply not reasonable to expect that ANY organization would be able
to provide standards at the cost of reproduction only. Even so-called "free" web access has costs associated with it. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Even electrons cost money.

So then you might ask why ANY standards organization is needed. Perhaps we can all just use anonymous chat rooms on ICQ or Hotmail to
develop standards. Unfortunately this simply won't work. You will never get the involvement of industry experts in a completely anonymous effort. These people are busy. They won't put in the time unless there are other serious experts involved. They won't put in the time unless they can see that the result is useful as measured by
the level of participation by other experts in the process. The only way to confirm this is to know who is involved.

OK so it can't be anonymous, why can't we all just get together and do a standard without an organization? To answer this imagine a standards effort where people from Rockwell, Schneider, GE, Alstom, Siemens, Emerson, and Siebe are all present. But B&R, Control, and National don't even know its going on. I'm afraid that the guys in black hats from the FTC, FBI, EU Commission, etc. would be arresting CEOs left and right for collusion. Standards organizations are needed
because they provide an umbrella under which people with conflicting interests can gather and work together without fear of lawsuits and
arrest.

The reason that RFCs are free is that the IETF, IAB, ICANN, etc. etc. all receive millions of dollars in subsidies to cover all the overhead. ISA doesn't receive millions in subsidies. They receive membership dues which they have a fiduciary responsibility to spend for the benefit of their members. If you want to benefit join. Or pay the few bucks they charge for their reasonably priced standards.

Regards,
Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.
 
R

R A Peterson

In a message dated 11/6/00 11:13:36 AM Central Standard Time, [email protected] writes:

> So, ISA pays for the infrastructure, whether physical (meeting rooms, staff
> support, paper, printing, distribution, etc.) or digital (standards
> committee listservs, web space, web administration costs, staff support,
> etc.).
>
> As I have said before in this forum, and people just seem to blow by it in
> the drive to get free standards, ISA recoups about half the cost of
> supporting standards.
>


I'm curious. Is the reason the ISA cannot recoup the funds it spends on creating standards because:

1) The ISA is a bloated bureaucracy
2) Inefficient use of technology to create standards
3) Ineffective use of volunteer labor

Or is there something else. I understand there is some cost associated with publishing standards (particularly if you print them), but I am baffled by the continued claim of high costs to create them when most of the work is done by volunteers.
 
C

Curt Wuollet

Hi Walt

OK, I'll play.

As Organizer of the Free Standards Committee, I will dissolve the present organization bringing the burden cost to zero. Henceforth all standards
work will be on a volunteer basis. The Standards will be available in machine readable format only on our hosted web site donated by_____________. A team of volunteers will be recruited to handle
hard copy, book, and CD requests on a print on demand basis. This group may retain funds generated and buy beer or morph themselves into whatever size non-profit .org the sales will support, provided the first paid employees fill positions whose need is agreed to by a 2/3 majority of contributors. Equipments funded shall also meet this standard. Contributors shall collaborate by means of mailing list, www forum, or other public means. Such means may be moderated as necessary to maintain a working
environment but, any rejected input must be published seperately as this is a public.org.
Companies who wish to contribute are encouraged to make facilities available at no cost to the organization for thos few occasions where physical premises are needed. The Standards produced will be protected by a public license resembling the GPL used for software and can be copied and disseminated freely to encourage
their use.

Regards

cww
 
J

John F .Vales

Walt-
I've been watching this discussion for some time now, and cannot remain silent any longer. I'm having a tough time understanding _why_ so many on this board are getting heartburn over paying the few bucks necessary here and there to obtain
a copy of a standard. The cost is minimal, and the need is often plenty justifiable on nearly any size of project.

If one needs an API reference, for example, one goes to Amazon.COM, etc. to buy the reference, with no guarantee that the required API or
other info is specifically listed in the purchased document. Why should reference standards be any different?

An even more value-added service might be one where a subscriber (user/tester/etc.) could pay a regular fee in exchange for a researcher
looking for the answers to specific questions, pointing to the pertinent specs in a given situation. One could be allowed a certain number of queries per quarter or year based upon the fee paid. This would narrow the number of fruitless searches, thus increasing the value of the spec,
once purchased.

Another concept might be that if one contributes towards the writing, evaluation, testing, or otherwise increases the validity of a given spec,
that this individual would be given a certain number of "credits" toward spec purchases or look-ups.

<Flame minimization mode, please>
Opinions here are my own, etc. etc. etc.

jfv

John F. Vales
Director of Technology
[email protected]
 
B

Bouchard, James [CPCCA]

Have you considered that the NEC is not that cheap compared to ISA Standards and that the print run for the NEC is at least an order of magnitude greater than the print run for an ISA Standard? Most electricians need a copy of the
NEC and there are a lot more electricians than there are technicians. Also you might look at the structure of the code making body for the NEC to see how it is different from the structure for ISA Standards.

James Bouchard
 
W
I can't say whether ISA is a "bloated bureacracy" or not, because you haven't specified what those extremely loaded terms mean. Do _I_ personally
think ISA could administer standards work better and cheaper? No. The people at ISA who administer the standards activity are seriously
understaffed and overworked, and give greater value for the money than any private sector group I know of. Will that convince you? Probably not.

Since ISA has been working electronically in the standards creation process since 1997, I don't think your second point is true, either. There are some things we'd like to do electronically that we can't yet, but we're working on an all-electronic completely consultative standards creation process. By the way, that cost a lot of money to produce, so far, and doesn't look like
it is going to get any cheaper, either.

Volunteer labor is inherently less effective than paid staff labor. WE could write standards much faster if we just wrote them, and didn't care how
well they matched the needs and uses of the automation community and profession. But, it doesn't hurt much to be fired from a volunteer job, and of course, if you have time constraints, volunteer assignments take a backseat to paying work. Shouldn't they?

Finally, if after everything that's been said here, you still have difficulty believing that doing standards, even with volunteer labor, costs
money, I fear your bafflement is at least partly self-created.

I challenge you, personally, to come up with at least one concrete suggestion for making ISA standards free.

Walt Boyes
 
J
Throughout this discussion, I have not seen anything that comes close to giving actual numbers. What are the costs, specifically? Meeting place, Travel, etc? How much of this could be replaced by video conferencing and online discussion? I realize not all, but probably more than what is done now.

How about a list that we can look at that would justify the pricing? Maybe there are ways to decrease cost rather than increase revenue?

- --Joe Jansen
 
W
Well, Curt, I _won't_ play. The last thing the world needs is another standards organization, free or not.

The challenge was to come up with a way to help ISA pay for standards...

Walt Boyes
 
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