RE: Redirection of IPF dollars
Howard, I think you need to be clear that the IPF money varies by our attendance and that if our attendance levels were to go down in the future the figure might very well be less than the nominal $100K which you are offering. Whether this decrease in attendance would correlate with a decrease in the demand for the product is, I believe, indeterminate at this point. Since e-commerce is becoming such a common capability these days, I would think we could work on providing a system where for a very nominal cost (~$10) folks could download copies of relevant standards and thereby eliminate the need for us to provide an ongoing subsidy to keep the program going. If you can believe the laws of supply and demand IEEE should be able to attract at lot more business at $10 a copy than they can sell books at $100+ each.
I just think we need to understand the costs and business parameters here before we make an unilateral offer. I know if somewhere waved $100K under my nose I'd be tempted to take it and worry about the details later.
Thanx, Buzz
Everett O. (Buzz) Rigsbee
Boeing SSG
PO Box 3707, M/S: 7M-FM
Seattle, WA 98124-2207
ph: (425) 865-2443, fx: (425) 865-6721
email: everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com
> ----------
> From: Howard Frazier[SMTP:hfrazier@cisco.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 10:11 AM
> To: stds-802-sec@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: Redirection of IPF dollars
> Apparently, the IEEE staff is working up a proposal for us that will be
> presented at the November meeting. I think we should allocate some time
> during the opening plenary meeting to hear this proposal, and then discuss
> it during the WG meetings, with a goal of reaching a decision at the
> Thursday PM meeting. Included are some messages I exchanged with the staff.
> Howard
> From krupp@stdsbbs.ieee.org Thu Oct 21 05:10:29 1999
> X-SMAP-Received-From: outside
> From: Karen Rupp <krupp@stdsbbs.ieee.org>
> To: "'Howard Frazier'" <hfrazier@cisco.com>
> Cc: "'j.t.walker@ieee.org'" <j.t.walker@ieee.org>,
> "'jcarlo@ti.com'" <jcarlo@ti.com>
> Subject: RE: a wild idea
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 08:13:55 -0400
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by agate.cisco.com id FAA20694
> Howard,
> As a matter of fact we're working on such a proposal. Jim Carlo recently proposed this topic to us during the September board series. Jerry Walker is in the process of putting together a proposal for the 802 committee which will be discussed at the upcoming meeting in November. I've copied them both of your proposal below.
> Karen
> From: Howard Frazier [SMTP:hfrazier@cisco.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 9:26 PM
> To: k.rupp@ieee.org
> Subject: a wild idea
> Karen,
> Every couple of years, the membership of the IEEE P802 LAN/MAN
> Standards Committee asks itself the question "Why aren't our standards
> freely available?". The answer, of course, is that there are costs
> associated with publishing these fine documents, and costs associated
> with the development of these documents, and there ain't no such thing
> as a free lunch, etc, etc, etc.
> Well, the idea has come up again, this time in the context of our other
> perenial debate, that being the International Participation Fee. Some
> folks would like to redirect the money that we are sending to ISO into
> the coffers of the IEEE-SA, in the hopes that this would offset the
> loss of revenue from 802 standards, and allow the IEEE to distribute
> them free of charge.
> The IPF amounts to about $100,000 per year. If P802 sent $100 grand
> per year to the IEEE-SA, would this offset the revenue that would
> normally be accrued from the sale of 802 standards? If P802 sent $100
> grand per year to the IEEE-SA, could our standards be made freely
> available? Let me assume that it would be sufficient to make them>
> freely available on the WWW, with CDROMs and paper copies available for
> a nominal fee to cover the cost of duplication.
> Howard Frazier
> IEEE P802 LMSC Recording Secretary
>