9 ms·
Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive?
Or, why are they not free?
Many times during my professional career I've wanted to read the underlying standard for a product or a system, and I can't ever be bothered to cough up the ~100 CHF they seem to demand. As a result I've never actually read a standard.
- Kenji 7y agoSame thing happened to me. "Hmm, let me check the actual standard for it, out of curiosity. Oh wait, I have to pay 100CHF, I guess not." I have no idea why that is but I wish there was a scihub for ISO standards. Because a world in which ISO standards (or any international standards, really) are free for anyone to read is an objectively better world.
- octocode 7y agoThe fee is to pay for the ISO's operating costs of maintaining and distributing the standards. They do have a section of publicly available standards, if you're interested: https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/ https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
- tinus_hn 7y agoThey probably have a gold web server that can only be powered by the tears of albino giraffes. For the price they charge for distributing one standard once, normal organizations can distribute files to anyone who asks essentially forever.
- michaelt 7y agoI suspect (although I've made no effort to verify this) that some standards organisations were set up in the days of paper copies and secretaries and typists, when they needed a 10-storey office building [1]. So naturally they set up a pricing structure reflecting those expenses. Then they kept the employee numbers and pricing structure due to institutional inertia. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/MK3C9AUgzV16Svem8 https://goo.gl/maps/MK3C9AUgzV16Svem8
- tracker1 7y agoThere's more to an organizations overhead than just the web servers. There's staff, reviewers, publishers, editors, etc. Of course, it's probably still most likely over-priced, and I have no insight into ISO's operational funding or internals.
- SahAssar 7y agoDo ISO handle proofreading, editing and so on? My impression was that they mostly did publishing, which has become less and less of a cost center.
- dwheeler 7y agoI think that's exactly correct. It's more than inertia; they are being paid to not update their polices, so they're incentivized to not do so... even though their policies inhibit the use of standards (their purported goal).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yamilg 7y agoThank you for sharing this! For some reason I really enjoy reading standards documents.
- jjoonathan 7y agoMany other standards organizations have figured out funding models that don't shut out hobbyists, the interested public, academics, and professionals with tangential (rather than direct, funded) interest. ISO has not. They are behind the times in this regard.
- kierank 7y agoISO is full of vested interests that don't want hobbyists, the interested public, academics, and professionals to access the documents and be able to implement them at a lower cost.
- theincredulousk 7y agoI don't think $100 can really be considered a major roadblock to any technology professional capable of doing a standardized implementation...
- yusyusyus 7y agohaving a copy of a single ISO standard is virtually never gonna work. too many references.
- rightbyte 7y agoAlso it's way to much trouble to make the purchase departement buy them. If the standard is not on some local file server due to someone dowloading it from some russian site, it doesn't exist and I just reverse engineer the needed part of the standard from some application using it and guess alot.
- dwheeler 7y agoIn a world where there were only a few hundred standards, sure. But today's complex computer systems depend on hundreds of thousands of interfaces, and those interfaces are depended on by millions of organizations. Their business model inhibits standardization, instead of aiding it.
- Scene_Cast2 7y agoOn one hand, I ran into this myself a couple of times (needed to spec some tolerances for shafts and holes; wanted to find laboratory glassware specs). Didn't end up getting them since it was a one-off query each time. On the other, you have to admit that they do a much better job of making money for the value they provide, compared to e.g. compiler developers. (Just from a cold capitalistic viewpoint. I don't philosophically agree with not having a free way to get started with programming.)
- chopete 7y agoCan think of 2 reasons why it is not free. a. These are meant for a business to show off its compliance. A business means it is already making money. I am sure every company would be happy to pay that 100CHF to buy it for you , just like they can afford to buy a book, if they are thinking about ISO. b. The ISO compliance is to be asserted by a 3rd party auditor. They are a member of the ISO community and/or have a copy of the standard with them.
- number6 7y agoI am ok with a), but b): how should I comply with something I don't know. Sometimes I have to comply by law. What is this the soviet union?
- lathiat 7y agoSometimes you can access standards from a library. Not sure how common that is for ISO but maybe look it up.
- wolfgke 7y agoI asked at my local university library in Germany: they can't be accessed there.
- danmg 7y agothere are torrents that have all the standards...
- wolfgke 7y agoWhere?
- danmg 7y agomagnet:?xt=urn:btih:F046266BE1BFB1528A6C766526A8B17254059429&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.t-ru.org%2Fann%3Fmagnet&dn=ISO%20standards%20%2F%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D0%98%D0%A1%D0%9E%20(%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)%20%5B1973-2017.%20PDF%2C%20ENG%5D edit: nice emo downvotes. Torrents today. Torrents Tomorrow. Torrents Forever! They're the only cloud that matters.
- andrewaylett 7y agoI've been part of a team developing C++ compilers and run-time libraries. We used the final draft, which (at least for C++) is freely available. I suspect anyone relying on the final text (were it to differ from the last public draft) would be disappointed to discover that pretty much no-one uses it. It doesn't seem to me to be a terrible trade-off to say that ad-hoc use via public drafts is fine, but if you need to use the actual spec for whatever reason then you're probably being paid to abide by the spec and it makes sense to charge for it. Where I strenuously object to non-public specifications is where they're referenced in (and required by) legislation: if ignorance of the law is no excuse, the law had better be freely available.
- Causality1 7y agoOne is reminded of the legal fight over the public posting of Georgia's penal code.
- rootsudo 7y agoMore info? I tried to google and I can't find any good links - was it that only people that could afford printed copies had access to the Law?
- Geforce8472 7y agoLink here has some info about it: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181019/12232640876/appeals-court-says-course-georgias-laws-including-annotations-are-not-protected-copyright-free-to-share.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181019/12232640876/appea...
- TeamTeaTime 7y agohttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/appeals-court-tells-georgia-state-code-cant-be-copyrighted https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/appeals-court-tells-ge... Basically there are annotations that are considered part of the law but they are behind copyright and can't be distributed in the way you expect public laws to be.
- 7y ago
- brandmeyer 7y agoIEC standards are also expensive. However, there's a hack available. Denmark has incorporated many of the international IEC standards as national standards "by-value". They are also available at a much lower price than the IEC standards. So if you buy the ~100 USD DS-60950-1, you'll find a Danish cover page followed by the otherwise 900 CHF IEC/EN-60950-1 (the International/Eurozone IT equipment electrical safety standard), which also happens to be harmonized with the ~2500 USD UL-60950-1 (The American IT equipment electrical safety standard).
- Tomte 7y agoANSI used to have several interesting standards (C, C++) as PDF for 30 dollars each. Unfortunately, they upped their prices considerably.
- bbatha 7y agoIts also worth noting that you can basically find all of the standards in their draft forms for free. You need to be slightly careful about the revision numbers, but often the drafts are identical to the ISO ones. You really only need to pay for the draft if you want to be certified as in compliance or are an enterprise user. In which case the fee is paltry.
- UglyToad 7y agoIs there a way to search for these? I've tried trawling through many sites to find draft versions of ISO 32000-2:2017 but it seems to have fallen down a memory hole. Is there a naming convention around drafts or is it just luck of the draw? Apologies is this is not a valid query.
- bbatha 7y agoluck unfortunately :(
- s1mon 7y agoI've often thought that if standards organizations were truly interested in encouraging the use of their standards, they would make them freely available and recover their operation costs some other way. Even worse than the standards orgs themselves is IHS which acts as an electronic library (gatekeeper troll) for these orgs. In theory they are providing a service of managing electronic copies of expensive standards so that a big company doesn't get into licensing/copyright violations, but really all they're doing is adding overhead on top of stuff which should be free in the first place. At one point the orgs were covering printing and shipping costs, but with electronic downloads and PDFs, it's really crazy to charge $$$ for a standard, especially when it doesn't include updates. A couple exception to this madness: US government stuff (e.g. Mil-Std) which by law is all copyright free and downloadable, and USB.org is surprisingly and pleasantly just available for download.
- buckminster 7y agoAll the ITU ASN.1 specs are free. Maybe other ITU specs, I haven't looked.
- gumby 7y agoI know this question relates to the scandal of standards documents, but unlike the IETF it's possible to write ISO standards that are essentially proprietary by including various patent encumbrances, making them prohibitively expensive to implement. IEEE standards are particularly terrible in this regard.
- kierank 7y agoNominally to cover the costs of production. However, this is a convenient barrier to entry for Open Source and amateur developers that many companies who are standards participants don't object to.
- TomJansen 7y agoWouldn't it be a good idea to have a site just like SciHub but only for ISO (and other) standards?
- weinzierl 7y agoIt's called Library Genesis. Ok, it's not really a SciHub for standards, but it is in the same spirit. Most people don't order standards from the ISO, they get them from their organization's (university or corporation) library. Very much the same as for papers. What can you do if you are not affiliated with any organization that provides access? You can turn for SciHub for papers and to LibGen as your library. Needless to mention that both are infringing copyright and may or may not be legal for you to use.
- number6 7y agoYeah ISO are de facto laws and the should be free
- theincredulousk 7y agoTBH I think IEEE is worse than ISO. After a fairly hefty yearly membership fee, they want you to pay for individual specs that other IEEE members created??? I needed to look at a 15+ year old IEEE spec, and thought "hey I'm a member, certainly I have access to it!". Nope. They wanted like $50 from a member. For a 15+ year old spec. I let my membership lapse after that. Just couldn't figure out a way that it was worth $250+ year.
- strongbond 7y agoBecause it costs money to sustain the armies of talentless paper-pushers who work for these organisations.
- dwheeler 7y agoBecause ISO likes free money. In most cases ISO doesn't pay the authors and reviewers of standards, so instead of posting the document for free, it gets to indefinitely receive 100% of the profit from the work. It's a sweet deal for ISO, and a terrible deal for the rest of the world. ISO's paywall makes it very difficult to apply their standards. It's essentially an anti-standardization stance, not what you'd expect from a standards body. It's especially a problem because today's complex systems depend on millions of agreements that need to be standardized (not necessarily by ISO). More generally: If a publisher charges money for a document, you should ask if the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a royalty on the profit. If the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a (decent) royalty, then that's a decent justification for the charge. If the authors/employers are not getting paid, then that looks suspiciously like an exploitative relationship. ISO is in the latter camp. Que bene? I'll use ISO standards, and if my employer pays me I'll participate in an ISO process. But I strongly prefer working with standards organizations who have changed their processes to fit the 21st century. Today many people's expectation is that a standards body will make the standards freely available, since there's no excuse to do otherwise. ISO fails that test, and instead has a big paywall. The historical justification was to support a printing press, but that is completely unnecessary today (just post the PDF or HTML, that's all we need!). ISO will occasionally release standards freely (e.g., the Ada language specification and the Common Criteria were ISO standards that ISO agreed would be freely available even on initial ratification). But you have to work for it. Other standards-setting bodies, like the IETF, are typically wiser choices for developing standards. I hope that someday ISO will change their policies. But as long as they're getting lots of free money, based primarily on work by people they don't pay, it's not clear why they would change.
- la_barba 7y ago>Today many people's expectation is that a standards body will make the standards freely available, since there's no excuse to do otherwise. How many people have this expectation and how do you know?
- shmerl 7y agoUsual parasite approach. Accessing standards should for sure be free for everyone.
- la_barba 7y agoWhy should it be free? What is your rationale?
- shmerl 7y agoBecause standards are not products. They should enable things, not to be used for profit. Profiteering from that hinders progress. It should be quite self explanatory.
- la_barba 7y agoMany standards are simply guidelines or arbitrary rules. Someone just makes it up. For e.g. i++ has a specific meaning according to a language standard. Or the width of a door should be 36" inches. That is something someone just made up. You can make up a standard yourself. Other kinds of standards have years of work behind them, like engineering standards for bridges, or food safety standards. Someone has to pay the people to do the work. There is nothing inherently free or non-free about them. The other important thing here is being able to read the standard gets you nowhere. You have to implement the standard, and an independent third party has to verify that you have implemented them. Someone has to pay for all this work. It would be nice if this was tax payer supported, but if the government isn't going to pay for it, maybe you would like to setup an international fund to contribute? I'm sure they would love to make them free of charge. >They should enable things, not to be used for profit. Profiteering from that hinders progress. It should be quite self explanatory. I want to pay the people who work on the standards. Profits help with that. Ergo, profits help progress. QED :) BTW, ISO standards have been for-pay for years. Please explain specifically how it has hindered progress. Some data would be nice. The burden of proof is on you, given the decades of counter-factual evidence.
- shmerl 7y ago
- weinzierl 7y agoI don't like the high prices either and wish these were available for free. At least the demand to have them for free is not unreasonable given that a large part of the work that goes in the standards is ultimately financed by tax money. But to answer your question: Because the primary customers are organizations who are willing to pay. Individuals that are not affiliated with one of the paying organizations are not considered, unfortunately. From a practical point of view it is not hard to get access. My experience is: As long as I was a student or an employee of a university the library provided me access and I was allowed to copy the standards as long as I needed them for my studies. When I left university I could still get a library card for the library and I could read the standards as long as I wanted but I wasn't allowed to copy them. Also every bigger company I worked for provided access. At least that's my experience.
- w8rbt 7y agoWhen you do buy an individual copy, it comes with your name printed in the footer of every page. I had a copy of one once (won't say which one) and I could not let my boss read it. For many topics, national standards (like NIST) are great. They are free too. Edit: We went with individual purchases because the group license was way too expensive. Had we paid for that, then we could have shared the docs with upto X employees.
- tracker1 7y agoI'm not sure how they can restrict you from lending such things, unless you've signed a contract specifically saying so. Copyright cannot be used that way, at least in the US.
- la_barba 7y agoI view ISO standards as a tax on companies who are willing to stand by their product and processes. Modulo obvious caveats, if they can get certification/compliance/accreditation , the end user can have a modicum of confidence when dealing with the business. It lets you buy toys for your child with a peace of mind, or get into a car with ISO certified airbags, or buy network equipment for your server build, etc etc. Its trivial to point out flaws in any system, its not easy to propose something better that you can actually implement in the real world.
- FrozenVoid 7y agoVery few programmers care about standards and even downloading drafts of them - despite all these forum/mailing lists arguments "what/which code is standard"( a tiny vocal minority), their market is likely some sort of enterprise bureaucrats that must have the Official(TM) Standard(TM) printed in triplicate to bully local programmers into following it "up to legal code". If the standards were free, i guess they're going to be a bit more popular, however thats too late to change programmer culture[1] which evolved without them - so standards organizations don't have much of an incentive to make them public domain. [1] Compiler manuals are what people using as standard, and standards eventually adopt compiler features.
- zaarn 7y agoProgrammers care a lot about standards; we just have more open standards like RFCs and W3C/WHATWG.