Re: [802SEC] "Get IEEE 802" comments
Carl -
As far as I can tell, the £25 "fulfillment charge" is based on an
anachronistic model of standards sales that assumes that they are dealing
with paper copies (up-front investment in printing, warehousing, packaging,
shipment, etc.), and also based on the need to support what must be
becoming a pretty inefficient and costly institution to run these days.
I completely agree with you that the idea of charging $25 for servicing a
PDF download makes absolutely no sense. Neither, as you have observed, does
it make any sense for us to contemplate doubling our contribution to the
program. And the alternative, of stopping the program, makes no sense
either - looking at the numbers we saw last Friday, if we stop paying our
existing contribution I very much doubt that the IEEE would be able to make
up the shortfall in increased sales given that the lion's share of the
sales come in the first 6 months anyway.
Maybe the right thing to happen here is for us to precipitate a crisis by
leaving the contribution unchanged; at least at that point the IEEE will
have to apply a more rational line of thought to what alternatives there
might be - and charging $25 to service a PDF sale isn't one of the things
that I would include in the definition of "rational" here!
Regards,
Tony
At 13:57 15/03/2006, Carl R. Stevenson wrote:
>I don't think it's acceptable to increase our participants' cost for
>supporting the program beyond where it is now.
>
>As I tried to discuss, but there wasn't time during the Friday EC meeting in
>Denver, I just can't understand how it "costs" $25 to fulfill a .pdf
>download. (I may have misunderstood, but my understanding was that was the
>reason stated as to why a nominal (say $5) charge per download from Get 802
>"wasn't a viable option" to further support the program without increasing
>our participants' per meeting session costs.
>
>As I said, it seems to me that the incremental cost of a .pdf download is
>negligible and I don't understand why simply changing the price (to
>something like $5) 6 months after 802 standards are published isn't viable.
>
>I'd like to hear a good explanation of what I'm missing so that I can
>understand it and we could see if we could figure out a way to fix this.
>
>Carl
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Roger B. Marks [mailto:r.b.marks@ieee.org]
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:59 AM
> > To: STDS-802-SEC@listserv.ieee.org
> > Subject: [802SEC] "Get IEEE 802" comments
> >
> > Karen,
> >
> > Every time we discuss the Get IEEE 802 budget, it gets me to
> > thinking about the program itself, and how it might be
> > improved, or even maintained.
> >
> > So, I have the following comments:
> >
> > *The "Get IEEE 802 Program Agreement" says "Documents subject
> > to the wait period will be listed on the website with a link
> > to a site where the documents may be purchased." However, I
> > don't see such links at the site:
> > http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802
> > In fact, I don't ever recall seeing such links, even though
> > I've brought up this issue a few times over the years. There
> > is a pointer to the IEEE Store, but that's not the same
> > thing; the Store is an easy place to get lost, and it does
> > not include a list of available
> > 802 documents.
> >
> > *Are sales of drafts included in the Get IEEE 802 budget? I
> > think IEEE could do a better job of promoting them for sale.
> > It's nice that the web page has two links to the draft sale
> > page. Unfortunately, both of those links are dead, because
> > they point to ILI. ILI has not been offering 802 drafts since
> > November 1.
> >
> > *As usual, we discussed the statistical profiles of the
> > downloaders when we met last week. However, I suspect that
> > this data may be out of date. I say this because, when I went
> > to download standards today, I did not receive the survey
> > form. [Neither did I receive a "Terms and Conditions" page to
> > accept.] I found the same results on two different browsers.
> >
> > Before we next meet to talk about the program budget, can you
> > see if IEEE can review the web site?
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > ----------
> > This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email
> > reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.
> >
>
>----------
>This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This
>list is maintained by Listserv.
----------
This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.