The other former employee gave very good information that presents a valid picture of how things were and have become.
I worked for CSI for a few years. The licensure that everyone is concerned about has been happening for at least 30 years, likely more. CSI licensed, in a slowly evolving fashion, the rights to use MasterFormat and its other standards. Not all folks who used MasterFormat were ever intended to need a license when I was there.
The basic rule of thumb we used when determining need for license was the form of use. Basically, if you used the standard in practice, to provide a SERVICE (specification writing, design, bid, construction documentation, etc.), then regardless of firm or company size, you were granted a pro bono license by CSI. Just use it! No paperwork was needed, no requests were made. This was because CSI at the time viewed project professionals as the driver for MasterFormat adoption and use. Charging them would kill demand and ruin everything. I doubt this reality has changed.
If on the other hand, you used MasterFormat in a PRODUCT (MasterSpec, ARCAT, SpecLink, Revit, Sweets when it existed, and many others), you would be contacted and asked to sign a regularly renewing license. The charges were not exorbitant and were negotiated in most occurences. CSI had MANY licenses with these types of product manufacturers and they were all willing to pay because of the demand professionals provided. This, not book sales, is what supported the existence and refinement of MasterFormat. You all benefited from these licensed resources.
(Oh, and with respect to the suggestion that CSI should invest in a digital tool like ASTM Compass, I think we can all agree that CSI doesn't have the catalog to support such an investment, that users are largely unwilling to pay for such access, and that asking them (you) to do so goes back to the same kind of demand killing charge that I described above. That is one of the main reason CSI made the numbers and titles absolutely free to see with the advent of MasterFormat 2004. Transition was recognized as a cost.)
The SERVICE/PRODUCT delineation served CSI well. That information was included in the MasterFormat EULA, Licensing Guidelines, and many other publicly available places. I am not sure any of those exist anymore or do so in the form that I would recognize.
The biggest issue I see driving all of this is that the communication about it has been vague and poorly managed. Communicating about licensure has always been fractious, mainly because specifiers survive on thin margins so costs are front of mind. Clarity was paramount, the cost of being unclear being the kind of explosion we have seen in this thread and others. Thus we see these reasonable concerns (stoked by input from others who appear to be taking joy from this exchange). The upset can only be calmed by clarity and frankness.
â In response to those who have suggested that MasterFormat, OmniClass, or CSI UniFormat are public domain or not copyrightable, I disagree for several reasons, at least one of which would be of importance to the CSI membership.
The first thing that has been suggested is that an organizational system cannot be copyrighted. This is clearly untrue, despite challenges being mounted by some on this thread. As a simple and very parallel example, the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted by OCLC, an organization that maintains a system for library cataloging used worldwide. Another parallel case would be UNIFORMAT II by ASTM. You are likely unaware of that copyright because ASTM is sufficiently flush from its other activities and sales that licensing UNIFORMAT II for them would be small potatoes. The important takeaway is that they could.
The second reason, the one that benefits CSI members, is that a non-copyrighted standard can quickly become non-standard. If it cannot be copyrighted then any organization can present a modified version as truth. We all know that MasterFormat is a flexible standard designed to meet project needs. The license agreement provided limits on local modification that could be made by a producer-licensee to MasterFormat in its product, with the intention of maintaining that standardization.
Regarding standards and copyright, there have been a lot of suits lately challenging the copyright on codes and standards produced by many organizations (ICC, ASTM, ASHRAE, NFPA, and others) suggesting that they cannot copyright something that eventually finds its way into regulations, as once that happens, the product becomes law and thus public domain. There are two basic issues with this. The first is that maintaining any standard is a costly proposition balanced (if the organization is lucky, most standards are loss leaders balanced by other revenue streams) almost entirely by purchase, subscription, or licensure. If a standard becomes public domain, the infrastructure for maintaining it dissolves and the standard effectively expires as a standard. With expiration, all of the things the standard enabled, whether that be a common working language, expectations about safety and health, interactive consensus-based agreements about software or product characteristics, or something else, can no longer be enforced or counted on. The end result is a less efficient, equitable, or safe world. As a quick example, I donât want Amazon or Apple telling me how the internet will be navigated, I count on a standards organization to do that. Same thing applies for all standards.
There is also a pro-codes act (see: https://www.procodesact.com/) floating in Congress now that is intended both the capacity of standards and codes to be copyrighted and the obligations of producers to the public and others. It has faced fierce opposition and has not yet passed.
In part, I think the anger and dissatisfaction in this is also driven slightly by a sense of grief. CSI as a member-driven organization has been dying slowly for at least 25 years. The money that was made âback in the dayâ from the trade show and other things provided a bankroll that CSI could invest and live off of. Dues have been declining that entire time, a decline exacerbated by the deals CSI made with an aging membership. Every emeritus member eats one new member in terms of cost of service and there arenât a lot of new members. The value proposition more or less evaporated with web 2.0. No new value proposition was ever identified. CSI is now in hospice.
I could talk more about the change to CDT and why it was necessary and not a cash grab, but I donât have the energy to have those arguments anymore. Best to you all.