[odf-discuss] Definition of International Standards

Fri Mar 23 22:05:36 EDT 2007

El vie, 23-03-2007 a las 13:30 -0400, Lars D. Noodén escribió:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> [snip]
> > From this page:
> > http://www.cen.eu/boss/support/support+processes+-+index/notification+procedure+-+notifications/index.asp
> >
> > it would seem that only CEN, CENELEC and ETSI  etc. are officially 
> > recognized.
> >
> > This text:
> >
> > http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/consleg/1998/L/01998L0034-20040501-en.pdf
> >
> > seems to confirm on page 14 that only CEN, CENELEC and ETSI are formally
> > recognized. This is related to Directive 98/48/EC amending Directive 98/34/EC
> >
> > http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/1998/l_217/l_21719980805en00180026.pdf

Those are "European standards", not "International standards". Those
standards have a highest legal rank and legal implications in the EU
than the international ones.
> 
> There Directive 98/48/EC uses the heading European Standardisation Bodies. 
> ISO and IEC are missing.
> 
> A no-interpretation-necessary link between the WTO Agreement on Government 
> Procurement, the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and 
> OpenDocument, would be ideal if we can show one.
> 
> Where should IETF or W3C fit?

"Industrial standards", since those organizations are composed by the
association of companies from the industry, not by official national
bodies.
> 
> > I assume IDABC is working on extending this list.
> 
> If it is extended to include ISO/IEC then that might be good.  If it is 
> being extended to include ones like Fat Bob's Drive-Thru Rib Shack and 
> International Standards Emporium or like Ecma, then it might not be so 
> good.
> 
ISO, IEC and ITU are the worldwide public international standard
organizations composed and internally represented by the national
standardization bodies of every country.

Anyway, it is not a good idea to recognize every ISO standard as
"official", since a lot of ISO standards are covered by software patents
and discriminate to the population or implementers that doesn't
license/agree with the owners of those patents. Check the recent MP3
case for example.

We made a classification of standards in FFII, please, check if you
agree with our view:
http://action.ffii.org/openstandards

//Alberto.