You are mixing up reading and using of standards: Unfortunately ISO standards are currently not freely available and you have to pay for a copy. ISO is changing slowly their business and we have already asked for making these particular standards available for free. (For some standards with broad interest it is possible to make them available for free, decision is pending)
The usage of ISO standards is completely free: And also for your development team and for all people "who want to *use* our data". I'm convinced that all people does not want to read metadata standards but only the specialists: All people want that metadata are simply working well and providing good search and retrieval results. Therefore I do not understand your argument (but I agree that I would also prefer if this ISO standard MLR would be available for free). Maybe you can say that the standard is not free but the usage of the standard is free (and that is more important). Therefore I do not know why MLR should not be usable for a Wikipedia project.
Best wishes Christian
With best regards Christian Stracke --- Christian M. Stracke Convener ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36/WG5 Chair CEN TC 353 HR, E-Learning, Quality and Competence Development University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Essen Information Systems for Production and Operations Management Universitaetsstr. 9 (FB WIWI: ICB) D-45141 Essen (Germany) Tel.: +49-(0)201-183-4410 Fax: +49-(0)201-183-4067 E-mail: Christian.Stracke@icb.uni-due.de WWW: http://www.wip.uni-due.de
eCOTOOL harmonizes competence models for European policies http://www.ecompetence.eu
WACOM for Water Competences in Europe http://www.wacom-project.eu
Q.E.D. supports quality and standards in e-learning http://www.qed-info.de
CEN/TC 353 "ICT for Learning, Education and Training" http://www.cen.eu/isss/TC_353
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 "IT for Learning, Education and Training" http://www.sc36.org
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Daniel Kinzler [mailto:daniel.kinzler@wikimedia.de] Gesendet: Mittwoch, 4. April 2012 11:54 An: Discussion list for the Wikidata project. Cc: Stracke, Christian; Denny Vrandečić Betreff: Re: [Wikidata-l] Wikidata: New ISO Metadata standard MLR published last year
On 04.04.2012 09:31, Stracke, Christian wrote:
Fourth, ISO standards can be used without any costs, without any licensing and without any patent problems (if not clearly stated differently on the first page).
Why then does the website ask for payment? Can I read the standard online somewhere, for free?
That means, only one person has to contribute the standard and then you can use it for any project including your Wikimedia projects.
Wikimedia is dedicated to using free formats and standards only. Not only the development team, also people who want to *use* our data need to be able to read the relevant standards. For free. If thy have to pay to be able to read the standard, it's not a free standard, and thus not usable for a Wikimedia project.
Daniel Kinzler