IP: more on CRADA -- you can hear the rip (off)

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

> X-Sender: simon@higgs.com
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> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 10:57:47 -0800
> To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
> From: Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>
>
>
> The MILSPEC database is still being bought by the government every year 
> from private "publishers". Not just once, but for each "seat" viewing the 
> information. DLA have set up a web site to reduce this cost, but it is 
> very slow, MS IIS based (so it disappears every time there's a worm or 
> online security flap), and is often not reliable enough for just-in-time 
> production work:
>
> http://www.dscc.dla.mil/Programs/MilSpec/
>
> This sends the people who need a full set of specs scurrying back to the 
> private publishers for proprietary format CD-ROMs, or per-seat "accounts" 
> to log into the publisher's web site and download the standards one at a time.
>
> Then there's the problem of Milspecs or standards which have been adopted 
> from commercial standards and are owned by other organizations such as 
> ANSI, IEEE, ITU, etc... each private spec or standard gets paid for over 
> and over again for each person needing to view it.
>
> On the production line, the aerospace industry writes all this off as a 
> cost of doing business and passes these costs on to the government within 
> the assigned contract, so burden ends up with the taxpayer who ends up 
> paying for the same specs and standards multiple times for each step of 
> the design/production/QA process.
>
> On a lighter note, for details of how the military came up with their 
> sheep specs, see the HBO movie "Pentagon Wars".

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