I would caution against going down the British Standard/ International Standard route. I too sit on British Standards Committees. I agree that accuracy would probably be the result, but the time factor is horrendous. To develop the standard would take at least 3 years for a British Standard and probably 10 years for an International standard. Once published the Standard would be the property of and copyright of the standards organisations. Any alterations would take years to implement and would be out of the hands of genealogists, who are after all, the people that the standard was written for and is used by. The genealogy fraternity would loose control of 'their' standard to bureaucrats. Currently Standards cost about £5 per page to purchase and that includes front cover and back cover and foreword, definitions, and a blank page if an odd number of pages is taken up. A 20 page standard currently costs £96! I suspect that a GEDCOM standard would run to at least 100 pages, and the discussions over definitions would take many meetings to sort out before work on the standard could begin. If I remember correctly the 'County codes' were made into a British Standard, and every FHS screamed because of the cost of purchase and the copyright issues. Barry Faiers On 24/04/2012 22:08, Rod Moulding wrote: > If GEDCOM or GEDCOMX is indeed an "international standard" SoG and others > should be pressing for it (them?) to be taken under the wing of the > International Standards Organisation (ISO), of which the UK member > organisation is the British Standards Institution (BSI). Some may demur on > the grounds of time and even bureaucracy, but from experience at UK and > European level I know that great care would be taken, that individuals from > all important and relevant organisations would be involved, and that the > result would be a genuine and accepted standard. > > Rod Moulding > >

*The Family History Information Standards Organisation*, (FHISO) was formed in February 2012 (see http://fhiso.org/). It is a non-profit organisation, international and is independent of the various developers. GEDCOMX will be/is an _open _standard, so copyright is not an impediment (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standards). I think it would be appropriate for SOG to participate in and contribute to both of these initiatives. In particular, it would benefit British researchers to have thier views taken into account in the development of standards and consequently future software. British researchers do some things differently to thier American counterparts. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I am going to mention RootsTech <http://rootstech.org/>again. Since the first RootsTech conference in 2011 brought together software developers and genealogists, big things have been happening, such as the two things mentioned above. Sue Adams On 25/04/2012 07:10, Barry Faiers wrote: > I would caution against going down the British Standard/ International > Standard route. I too sit on British Standards Committees. I agree that > accuracy would probably be the result, but the time factor is horrendous. > To develop the standard would take at least 3 years for a British > Standard and probably 10 years for an International standard. > > Once published the Standard would be the property of and copyright of > the standards organisations. Any alterations would take years to > implement and would be out of the hands of genealogists, who are after > all, the people that the standard was written for and is used by. The > genealogy fraternity would loose control of 'their' standard to > bureaucrats. Currently Standards cost about £5 per page to purchase and > that includes front cover and back cover and foreword, definitions, and > a blank page if an odd number of pages is taken up. A 20 page standard > currently costs £96! I suspect that a GEDCOM standard would run to at > least 100 pages, and the discussions over definitions would take many > meetings to sort out before work on the standard could begin. > > If I remember correctly the 'County codes' were made into a British > Standard, and every FHS screamed because of the cost of purchase and the > copyright issues. > > Barry Faiers > > > > On 24/04/2012 22:08, Rod Moulding wrote: >> If GEDCOM or GEDCOMX is indeed an "international standard" SoG and others >> should be pressing for it (them?) to be taken under the wing of the >> International Standards Organisation (ISO), of which the UK member >> organisation is the British Standards Institution (BSI). Some may demur on >> the grounds of time and even bureaucracy, but from experience at UK and >> European level I know that great care would be taken, that individuals from >> all important and relevant organisations would be involved, and that the >> result would be a genuine and accepted standard. >> >> Rod Moulding >> >> > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >