Talk:International Organization for Standardization

ISO and Copyrights

What's the copyright status of the standard documents? They are for sale in the ISO website Davidme 03:29 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

[1]: The material on ISO Online is subject to the same conditions of copyright as ISO publications, and its use is subject to the user's acceptance of ISO's conditions of copyright for ISO publications, as set out below. Any use of the material, including reproduction in whole or in part to another Internet site, requires permission in writing from ISO.

[2] The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes. The use of ISO 3166-1 in commercial products may be subject to a licence fee.

Is this GFDL-compatible? Davidme

No, the ISO standards are public, in that they are published, and you can use them to claim conformance. But while the standards documents are available for purchase, they are pretty expensive. You can get a license from ISO to reprint or include a standard in another publication, but the license is also expensive, and their terms for any on-line use are so prohibitve that almost no online versions exist. Lou I

Why no mention about this being self-defeating? Many small (or non-profit) software developers are forced to use incomplete and frequently inaccurate 3rd-party specifications or old ISO drafts due to the prohibitive cost of ISO documents. This issue works directly against the mandate of ISO. Boardhead 16:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

While ISO standards are copywrited, most published final standards are the result of draft versions submitted or updated by members. The U.S. government's standards body NIST maintains that since these were frequently created with public funds, the draft version is public domain. Lou I 19:48, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Discussion before Article Update

The ISO (IMHO) is not an non-governmental organization. I expect to update the article in September to reflect that opinion, but have placed this note and will allow at least two weeks for comments. Lou I 19:48, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

On the ISO website (here) I found this statement:

ISO is a non-governmental organization: its members are not, as is the case in the United Nations system, delegations of national governments. Nevertheless, ISO occupies a special position between the public and private sectors. This is because, on the one hand, many of its member institutes are part of the governmental structure of their countries, or are mandated by their government. On the other hand, other members have their roots uniquely in the private sector, having been set up by national partnerships of industry associations.

-- Heron

Heron and I have pretty well agreed to include something like the following statement: "While the ISO defines itself as an NGO, its ability to set standards which often become law makes it more powerful than most NGOs, and in practice it acts as a consortium with strong links to governments and major corporations." Lou I 18:56, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

History and 4 number label: I was hoping to get a brief history which explains its special and powerful role, its origins, growth and key moments of emergence of power, and presumably of replacing other organisations (IEC is still powerful in the electrotechnical field). I was also concerned that the second last paragraph describes the "ISO 99999:yyyy:title" label format standard, and the very next para. labels a standard as ISO 9660 Garry

About that format... That was confusing. Neither of the two examples given adheres strictly to the format, which seems pretty embarrassing. Can somebody who knows what he's doing correct that in whatever way it needs to be corrected? -- Anon

Disambiguation with ISO Rating

Okay, this one's probably been done to death, and if it has feel free to point me to the discussion (assuming it's archived somewhere). BUT... has it been decided by consensus somewhere that the ISO page should be a redirect here and not a disambiguation page that also points to ISO rating? I understand that ISO rating is an American standard and all, but right now if I search Wikipedia for ISO -all- I get is pointers to this page. ISO rating gets swallowed up and is pretty much unfindable. --Bcordes 17:21, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)

Replying to my own comment, ISO rating got redirected to Film speed, which is turns out is an ISO standard. So, I added an entry for ISO 5800 on List of ISO Standards and added a redirect at ISO 5800 to Film speed. Searching for "ISO film" gives you a link to ANSI, which gets you to the right place. So I'm happy now. :) --Bcordes 21:51, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

Connection back to IEC

I'm fairly new to Wiki, so I won't be surprised if I've missed this. Essentially, there is a very large group known as ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, that exists to handle the overlap in responsibilities for International Standardization between ISO and IEC. It consists of a number of sub-committees which are subsequently divided into working groups. I think there should be some type of entry for ISO/IEC JTC1, but I'm at a loss at how to apporach this. Should it be a stand-alone article or is there a way to link the ISO and IEC article together and capture the material?

I did find a single entry that referenced JTC1, but there was no link, not even a link to a non-existent article. Colin 23:22, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I suggest that you create a new section in this article titled == ISO/IEC JTC1 ==, explaining what it is and linking to IEC. You can add a similar section to the IEC article, linking to ISO. If somebody later decides to make this a separate article, then that's easily done, but the most important thing is to get the information out of your head and in to Wikipedia. Hope this helps. --Heron 16:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Heron. I've done that, hopefully what I've added makes sense. Continuing with my attempts to get a handle on the whole Wikipedia concept, I noticed that there was an abbreviated list of national bodies that contribute to IEC listed on that page. Obviously there is also a similar list for ISO. I would guess, though, that such a list would do better as its own article, "National Standards Organizations" or similar. Sort of like the link to a list of International Standards on this page (I haven't followed it yet to see what's there). Thoughts?

I really don't want to become known as "Mr Standards", I know the perfect individual for that title and I will never be as knowledgeable nor anal about standards as he is. I will, however, contribute as I can.

Nice work, Colin. You'll find a long list of NSOs at Standards organization, so you won't have to type them all in. --Heron 15:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

W3C is open source, right?

"...businesses started creating private consortia like W3C...". Huh? If I'm not mistaken, W3C is a non-profit open source organisation and certainly not privately owned. And I even believe that it already existed before private companies started to take part in it (because they realised that they could never surpass it through individual efforts). Though I'm not sure about that last bit. I'm in the middle of another edit so I don't have the time to research this now.

DirkvdM 08:43, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

It's private in the sense that it's not government-affiliated the way ISO is (as opposed to private in the sense that it's not traded on the stock market). Although it's non-profit and it's hosted by three universities, W3C is a pay-to-play organization. No individual members are allowed; you have to be a big organization that can pay a big chunk of cash up front, and then you have to subsidize the salary of several staff members whom you send to W3C (and they now become W3C's researchers, not yours). That's why most of the W3C members are large private corporations, since it's so expensive to subsidize W3C work. Furthermore, Tim Berners-Lee is the benevolent dictator who has the final say.

ISO is "public" in that it's an international quasi-governmental institution affiliated with the U.N., it's allegedly a "democracy" of standards institutions where each country can vote. To be part of it (that is, as an individual), you have to be credentialed by your country's "official" standards organization. In most cases the "official" organization is a government agency, with the exception of the U.S., where our official government standards agency is actually NIST but ANSI (a private organization) is the ISO representative because it has better lobbyists.

I put "public" in quotes, since most people don't have the government connections (or the time, money, or energy) to get credentialed so they can go participate in ISO's ridiculously inefficient meetings (try reading ISO Bulletin sometime to see what I mean). But the general idea behind ISO (at least as those clowns see it) is that if each government standards agency is careful to represent the "will" of that government's constituents, then hopefully the eventual ISO consensus on a standard will represent a delicate global consensus of consumers and businesses of all sizes (as opposed to the views of Microsoft and Adobe and any other giant corporation joining this week's consortium).

In contrast, the IETF approach is to let anyone join who wants to volunteer, although as Berners-Lee discovered, the IETF approach also has its problems. --Coolcaesar 09:21, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ok, got that. But still, the text seems misleading to me. So I did a little research this time and adapted the text. Alas, the only way I could do that was to really alter it, something I don't usually like to do - I prefer to leave the text intact and add a clarification. I hope I haven't stepped on any toes :). Oh, and I've found that the W3C isn't Open Source, but Open Software, which isn't the same but comes close. DirkvdM 11:00, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

"or iso"?

Is "iso" (lower-case) a standard/accepted way to refer to ISO? I've never seen it -- except from slang referring to ISO-9660 disc images such as "I'll burn that iso now", which I believe to be not relevant to this article, or at least not meant as in the context "iso" was listed. I suggest removing the or "iso" bit at the opening paragraph. --LodeRunner 04:26, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Joint Technical Committee

The article states a committee was formed but give no date at all.

"To deal with the consequences of substantial overlap in areas of standardization and work related to information technology, ISO and IEC formed a Joint Technical Committee known as the..."

When, dang it?

Where are these standards followed?

In what countries are the ISO standards followed? I suppose not all standards are followed everywhere, but some overview of which countries adhere to the most important ones or at least try to follow them would be useful, if only as an indication. Especially China is interresting since it contains at least 1/5 of the world population, but I haven't a clue what they use there. Or should I limit this question to the metric system? DirkvdM 10:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

That would be a huge mess and far too large for an article. I'm sure it would make a great book, though. There are literally thousands of ISO standards, some of which are followed in most countries and some of which are followed in only a handful or none at all. Limiting the scope to "important" standards wouldn't solve the problem. For example, I could make a good argument that the ISO standards for screw threads and the sizes of shipping containers are important because of their widespread and successful global implementation, but on the other hand, most people (including much of the Wikipedia audience) would find such standards to be incredibly boring.

Part of the problem is that to really understand ISO, you have to read its journal, ISO Bulletin, which is ridiculously expensive and notorious for its bland content, so practically no libraries bother to carry it. For example, the only library in all of Northern California that has a large archive of ISO Bulletin issues is the engineering library at UC Davis. In contrast, almost every academic library in California subscribes to far more interesting professional journals like Communications of the ACM. --Coolcaesar 20:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's an interresting one. Are any ISO standards followed in the USA. Like I said, maybe I should limit the question to the metric system (and thus ask this there), but this is the sort of thing I mean. The USA don't use the metric system, so I sort of assumed they wouldn't be bothered about other (relatively minor?) standards. But now I understand that is not the case? DirkvdM 08:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Some ISO standards are relatively common well known in the U.S. For example, ISO 9001 (quality control) is widely observed and many companies (especially on the West Coast) have huge signs on their buildings to announce their ISO 9001 compliance to passerby. Also, JPEG and MPEG are widely used in the PC context and are well-known (at least by all computer users who regularly work with graphics). Others, like ASN.1 and most of the other OSI standards, are relatively rare and obscure, because the market has preferred to use standards from private NGOs like W3C, IEEE, and IETF. --Coolcaesar 01:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

kgvkchgkckhgchkgchgfcch

Any paticular reasons this has been on the page for some time? --213.18.248.47 12:57, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Is ISO an acronym or not?

In the paragraph "The name", ISO is referred to be a name from Greek, but in the first line, it is an acronym. Which choice to be held? --Ch. Rogel 10:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't see where we say that it's an acronym. What am I missing? --Heron 11:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

"Other languages" pronunciation

I've removed the added pronunciation guide for "most other languages", which read: [ˈaɪsəʊ], in most other languages [ˈɪsʊ]. Given that most other languages don't even possess the vowels given here, and that each probably has their own pronunciation for the word, I can't credit that there exists a single "non-English" pronunciation for ISO (and if there did, it would more likely be [iso], or perhaps [izo]). If someone has evidence in support of the other pronunciation, though, feel free to restore it. Thylacoleo 07:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The name

We have "The reason it is in all caps in writing is that it appears that way in the Organization's logo (above). " This is plainly ridiculous. There are countless organisations and companies that have all-caps logos, but we don't do this for them. Are there any better explanations? Crazeman 22:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

ISO Guides

Can a section on ISO Guides be started? I am interested in Guide 34.TJMQAM 21:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

SPAM?????????

How can you possibly consider a link to the ISO website in an article on ISO to be spam? That is rediculous! Please do not revert it agvain without providing an explanation. Jerry lavoie 22:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Map Colors

Hey, I liked the map on the article, but people with Daltonism like me will have trouble to understand it. Would someone be kind enough to change the colors? :) Thanks. Yes,I came to the discussion page for the same request.I have the same problem. My suggestion would be to replace red with blue.Thx.

Languages

Does anybody else think it's amusing that the International Organization for Standardization logo is in both English and French? I guess they haven't gotten around to standardizing that yet.

Where is ISO?

anybody know where is the location of this organization? It's strange to look around and not to find the actual place where ISO Members meet! AshrafSS 05:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I think they're based in Geneva. They say so right on their home page, which currently has an announcement that they just consolidated from several buildings into one building in Geneva. --Coolcaesar 05:57, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Free ANSI Standards Link doesn't work

http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/free_standards.asp link break. When I visit the link, it says “Sorry! The page cannot be found”. So anyone who know the correct link, update the link.

This is not suitable anyway. This page is on the toipic of ISO. Sticking links to just one national standards body (ANSI in this case) is not appropriate. ANSI is not ISO, and neither is DIN, BSI, SCC or the others. Linking to them on this page does not stack up with logic. Linking to just one of them, especially so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.127.65.218 (talk) 09:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that a link to that page, or the ANSI shop, is appropriate from this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansi. Ditto the content articles for the other national standards bodies. That is where such links belong, not on the ISO article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.127.65.218 (talk) 09:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

ANSI Sales Links

Regarding the link addition to the so-called ANSI search engine, this clearly states that it is a NATIONAL resource, and every result of search leads to the sales option from the ANSI shop! The sham is paper thin. It is a sales driver by a single national standards body.

If ANSI's was inserted, so should every other standards body's search facilities. It is a nonsense. These sorts of links belong on the articles for the national bodies themselves. In this case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansi