[SystemSafety] Making Standards available to Standards Committees

[Les Chambers]

Derek
Regarding the motivation of committee members, right now I'm still in the glass-half-full camp. I am acquainted with at least one guy who managed an ISO-standard and was highly committed, even after he left his company (who I think paid his travel expenses) and started working for me (who could not afford to). He paid his own airfare to go to committee meetings from our base in Asia. So I am assuming that many if not all of the people on these committees have a commitment to our profession, and want to contribute to the canon.

Right now I'm still in fact-finding mode. My sense is that a widening of the community that contributes to the canon might be a good thing. From my previous interactions with Peter I understand that the IEC does not release 61508 for general comment prior to baselining. Could someone comment if I am wrong here. If I am correct could someone advance an argument as to why this is so. Limited public release to interested parties used to be the norm with IEEE standards. Could someone on this list let us know if this is still the discipline. I note that the most useful standards collection ever published is the IEEE software engineering standards collection which by now must be extensive. The last time I purchased a CD copy it was 300 dollars (IEC take note).

Let there be no mistake, IEC 61508 is an important canonical document for our profession. Let us first establish the "what is" of its disposition and availability and then discuss what we can do to change it for the better, if indeed that is warranted.

Cheers
Les

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Derek M Jones
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 10:47 PM
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Making Standards available to Standards Committees

Les,

> Is anything afoot?

Do you mean is there any IEC 61508 committee member who is actually
interested in doing anything practical to get copies of the document
in the hands of developers?  Rather than attending meetings because
it looks good on their CV?

The ISO rules allow member countries to adopt ISO Standards as National
standards.  Once a document is a National standard the price is set by
the National body.  This is what India does and how it is legally
able to make pdfs freely available.

So if you want your copies of the IEC 61508 documents to have something
other than Indian Standards wording on the front cover, you need to find
somebody in another country willing to do the leg work.

> Cheers
> Les
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Peter Bernard Ladkin
> Sent: Saturday, May 7, 2016 4:42 PM
> To: The System Safety List
> Subject: [SystemSafety] Making Standards available to Standards Committees
>
> John Knight, Martyn Thomas, I, and others here, have occupied ourselves sporadically by commenting on the inefficacy of current arrangements for engineering standardisation. For example,
> http://scsc.org.uk/paper_126/protect_reg_01-Knight.pdf?pap=933 and http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/WhitePapers/RVSsfssPrinciples.pdf
>
> This week at a meeting of the German National Committee responsible for functional safety of E/E/PE systems (and therefore IEC 61508 matters), the chair of a Working Group complained about the unavailability of standards for standards-committee work. The German electrotechnical standards organisation DKE makes all German standards available to all standards committees, but German standards are often translations into German of ISO or IEC standards, and inadequate for work with international import, for which one needs the ISO or IEC originals.
>
> The official position is that each standards-committee member must buy hisher own copy of a standards document which is needed. There is no discretion; the IEC (or ISO) holds copyright and makes the document available for purchase, and German copyright law is pretty rigid.
>
> This situation is appropriately characterised as "absurd" (there was general agreement).
>
> Some standards organisations, and some Secretaries of committees in them (who are standards-organisation employees) make discretely available to those committee members with a need the FDIS of a standard, which may differ in only minor ways from the published standard. The FDIS will be prominently watermarked "only to be used for standards development purposes". I don't know the status of such practice. The CDVs and FDIS are made available by international agreement to all standards workers and indeed competent engineers at development time, as part of the process of eliciting comments, but I don't know what governs their use, if anything at all, after the standard is published.
>
> The Brits apparently have no problem. The BSI makes available British Standards for its committees to work with, and these differ in only formal ways from the international standards where there are such, but apparently sufficiently to render inoperative the IEC copyright.
>
> Germany could do similarly. First, accept English as an appropriate language for German standards, through a change in the law. But then a couple of publishing houses would have their business model trashed, and "jobs would be lost", which is a discussion-ending comment here. (The usual response, that everyone would be better off by paying the same people the same money to do nothing, has little or no traction here.)
>
> There might be something to this. There were lots of people in the room, and use of the word "absurd" was not challenged. Maybe this could be taken to the DKE CEOs and thereby on to the IEC?
> The IEC is pretty intransigent about its business model. But the issue would be on the table, and that is a prelude to any movement on it.
>
> There is considerable disagreement with parts of the IEC business model. Companies and people provide their work on standards for free; the IEC makes money off it, and there is no quid pro quo arrangement at all. *Everybody* brings this up. An engineer costs hisher company let's say €400 a day, so even a moderately passive committee member will cost hisher company €4,000 a year; say €12,000 for work on a document for three years. For travel costs, add some 50% on top of that (at those prices, you wonder when decent videoconferencing is going to become generally available?). And an active member costs ten times that much or even more (travel costs remain similar, though).
>
> PBL
>
> Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany Je suis Charlie
> Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
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