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Comment by ajays | Hacker News Reader

This is why I canceled my membership in IEEE (and ACM). I believe these organizations have gone beyond their stated purpose, and now exist purely to sustain themselves and their monopolies on conferences.

If we just started boycotting them, they'd crumble in no time.

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I don't think so. First, IEEE has many non-US members who need this sort of central organization to do the job of, for lack of a better phrase, "reputation management", e.g. senior members, fellows, etc. Such things are taken into account when asking for grants. For students, IEEE is an excellent mentorship organization.

We don't want IEEE to go away, we just want it to see the facts about academic papers on the Internet and change its ways.

If we just started boycotting them, they'd crumble in no time.

Would that be a good thing? I haven't seen much evidence that IEEE is a no-good parasite. It's a huge leap to go from "gone beyond their stated purpose" and "exist purely to sustain themselves".

Don't forget- the last time your computer performed a floating point op, you benefited from the existence of IEEE (IEEE 754). The last time you used a network adapter, you benefited from the IEEE (IEEE 802.3 & 802.11), and I'm guessing it hasn't been long since you last used said adapter.

> Don't forget- the last time your computer performed a floating point op, you benefited from the existence of IEEE (IEEE 754)

>The last time you used a network adapter, you benefited from the IEEE (IEEE 802.3 & 802.11),

All IEEE is doing here is acting as a standardization committee. IEEE didn't invent floating points or ethernet adapters.

Not everything is standardized by IEEE(in fact very little, if you are talking computers), and stuff will work fine if IEEE is vaporized today. IEEE didn't invent anything, new stuff will keep getting invented, and if need be, some other label will be stuck on them.

I know they didn't invent them, but standards are a good thing.

We have other standardization entities.

Now only imagine if we had to pay a subscription fee to perform IEEE 754 floating point arithmetic.

Is there any part of the modern web that the IEEE were involved with? TCP? HTTP? etc?

No, the IETF is to blame for TCP and HTTP.

Well, ethernet is kind of a big deal, and arguably a pretty important factor in networking in general. Sure there are other technologies, but a decent standard is a huge part of why we can all just plug in.

You're forgetting that standardization, if it's going to happen at all, happens due to the companies involved, not entities like the IEEE: If a real-world standard is going to happen it will occur due to the companies deciding it is in their financial best interest. Otherwise, all the IEEE can do is write a pointless standard everyone ignores.

Okay I'm not defending the IEEE, but I'd like to inject some data into this discussion. From their latest annual report, in 2010 their revenues and expenses from periodicals was $134.65m and $120.63m respectively.

Lord only knows how they spent $120m to curate a bunch of journals and magazines, but the $14m profit is less than what they earned in investment income ($25m).

I'm so sick of people complaining about the IEEE and the ACM. The IEEE is not the Syrian government. If you think you have a simple solution for this problem, nobody will shoot you if you offer your candidacy for president or whatever.

Part of the solution is precisely to loudly complain about them. Actually, if we want most scientists to not bow to IEEE's terms (which will solve the problem), loud complaints are probably the best one can do.

So, here is my loud complaint: I hereby declare that I find this policy by IEEE outrageous, and that we should boycott them until they change.

Many scientists can't be bothered to put their papers online once they get tenure. The system right now gets university libraries to pay journal publishers to publish papers. Taking away the profit motive from this system can be a nice social experiment. Maybe we'll end up living in some kind of a socialist paradise where everyone gets the papers they want for free.

The entire field of physics seems to work this way and if anything, it's been thriving.

You're right, it must never be able to work in practice and must just be the realm of socialist paradise.

I never said it can't ever work in practice. Either it will or it won't. But then again, I'm not the one who's calling to abolish a working system that has served science for decades.

There is a small detail however that probably warrants the abolition of this "working system that has served science for decades": thanks to the Internet, distribution costs are kinda non-existent now.

And I tend to think that, where sharing costs you nothing, the socialist dream is quite possible.

Let's just drop the word "socialist". There is nothing socialist about free exchange of ideas without an overseeing authority.

Many Socialists would disagree with you about that, although of course they'd like people to exchange more than just ideas.

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