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RE: [802SEC] ISO versions of 802 standards




Tony and All,

A number of comments on your e-mail (I was not at the SEC meeting, so I may
be out-of-order)

In my time it was important for 802.11's success to be recognized as an ISO
standard (e.g. it was important in some countries to be able to refer to an
ISO standard in order to adopt a local standard). The WG needed to be
diligent in synchronizing their work with the ISO rules.

Nowadays, I agree that IEEE 802.11 standards are sufficiently accepted to be
recognized without an ISO stamp.

You state that it would be confusing to have to versions of the standard. In
fact there would be only one version that bears 2 designations. Only in some
small areas where we could not agree on a clause, would we add a remark that
the clause would only be valid for either the IEEE standard or the
International standard.

However, the most important item is the willingness  of a person to be the
ISO editor, his preparedness to travel to the ISO meetings and to strictly
coordinate with the IEEE staff to indeed obtain a new version.

Regards

--------------- 
Vic Hayes 
Agere Systems Nederland B.V., formerly Lucent Technologies 
Zadelstede 1-10 
3431 JZ  Nieuwegein, the Netherlands 
Phone: +31 30 609 7528 (Time Zone UTC + 1, + 2 during daylight saving time) 
FAX: +31 30 609 7556 
e-mail: vichayes@agere.com 



-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Jeffree [mailto:tony@jeffree.co.uk]
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 12:20 AM
To: stds-802-sec@ieee.org
Subject: [802SEC] ISO versions of 802 standards



Having just taken part in the discussion in the closing SEC meeting 
regarding submission of 802.11 standards to ISO, I am minded to make a 
motion at the November Plenary session to make it 802 policy not to submit 
802 standards to ISO in the future. There are a number of reasons, most of 
them rehearsed in this afternoon's discussion, why I believe that having 
ISO versions is a bad idea, including:

- Having two versions of the same standard leads to considerable confusion 
in the marketplace;

- IEEE already has a significant profile as an organization that produces 
standards (under their own brand) that are Internationally recognized, so 
the process is of marginal utility and simply serves to dilute the IEEE
brand;

- Keeping the documents "in sync" is problematic at best, and arguably 
impossible;

- The process generates complications and extra work for the Editors and 
the IEEE staff;

- The relevance of ISO as a source of networking standards is highly 
questionable;

- As both ISO and IEEE will end up selling the document, there is the 
potential for loss of IEEE revenue.

I think it is time that we reviewed our position on this issue. I will make 
a motion at the Friday SEC meeting in November, and will remind you of my 
intent to do this at the Monday SEC so that there will be an opportunity 
for feedback on this from the WGs.


Regards,
Tony