IEEE Software Standards

Question

The IEEE has a long list of standards for almost every step within the software engineering process. How many of you have seen a reference to such standards in the documentation you read?

I think the idea of combining the suggestions from many veterans is a good thing, but I have the feeling that not many projects ever quote not even one single of those documents. Maybe only the huge ones?

Since the standards are paid, I do not expect to ever see them quoted from open source applications. My question is directed to those of you working with proprietary source code.

Answer 1

Never. The larger the project, the larger the cost. The larger the cost, the more importance in getting it done and selling it. Standards are just a set of ideals--they don't sell software for you.

Answer 2

What exactly are you expecting? The average open source developer might not have access to IEEE standards, but the standards permeate through the entire computer industry. For example IEEE 754 specifics the standard for floating point computation that is used by most modern systems, including every one of the numerous open source JavaScript implementations.

The reason the usage of such standards isn't very visible has nothing to do with open or closed source, it is a function of how low level most IEEE standards are. Most programmers work and much higher levels than IEEE standard, many of which, are only of interest to hardware and driver developers. I expect the number of developers deterred from starting open source projects, because of lack of access to the standards to be quite small.

Answer 3

I'd say your question is too broad. IEEE has a lot of standards, with very different availability. The IEEE 802 standards are available for free as PDFs after some months (see GetIEEE802 page). IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 is available on the web (see The Open Group page), ...