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Many other standards organizations have figured out funding models that don't shut out hobbyists, the interested public, academics, and professionals with tange

Many 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 ago
ISO 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 ago
  I don't think $100 can really be considered a major roadblock to any technology professional capable of doing a standardized implementation...
  - yusyusyus 7y ago
    having a copy of a single ISO standard is virtually never gonna work. too many references.
    - rightbyte 7y ago
      Also 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 ago
    In 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.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    $100 isn't a roadblock to a funded implementation effort, but that's not the only meaningful interaction a functioning society can or should have with a standard. $100 is a large roadblock to many other types of meaningful interaction.
    - la_barba 7y ago
      "What they should be" is always an arguable position. We can only hold them accountable to their own charter.
      - jjoonathan 7y ago
        Why on earth would you think that? I don't give one whit about their charter. Neither should you. In all likelihood, neither do they.
        la_barba 7y ago
        Because I'm not an idealist, and I don't want to be one. I'd like to think I'm a practical person who looks at what can be done realistically. It has worked out OK for me so far. YMMV.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > I don't think $100 can really be considered a major roadblock to any technology professional capable of doing a standardized implementation... The problem is: the time when people learn most about programming is as students when they have too much time and hardly any money.
  - kierank 7y ago
    There's no driver for XQD cards in Linux because of a $100 specification for example
- mrozel 7y ago
  This has always been my opinion. Plus, I've found them ripe with anti-patterns that contradict what they actual iso standards stand for.
  - holy_city 7y ago
    Can you provide some examples?
rayiner 7y ago
Like W3C? “Standards” funded by Google’s ad monopoly? How is that going for them? The demand for everything to be “free” is destroying the idea of neutral standard. Standard must be funded somehow. The ISO model has worked for decades. The W3C model, where you don’t charge for either the standard or the products, has become a tire fire.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Open standards organizations in general and the W3C in particular were in full swing long before Google existed and will continue to do meaningful work long after Google's ad monopoly gets broken up or disrupted into irrelevance. It takes a special kind of singlemindedness to look at modern web standards and the open source WebKit ecosystem, dismiss their wild, outsized success as a tire fire, and call for more corporate exclusivity as the solution.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  The W3C's failures pale in comparison to what I hear of the ISO MPEG process, in which companies compete to put as much of their patented technology in the codec standard as possible without any regard for coherence. ISO is worse than the W3C.
  - tombert 7y ago
    It's even worse than that; the way you end up getting a license to these patented codecs (that are now part of the standard), you end up buying access to codec pools from groups like MPEG-LA. This isn't inherently bad, but the price of buying a license to these pools doesn't typically decrease, even when some (or most) of the patents in that pool expire.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    ISO at least still releases real standards with multiple implementations. Web standards by contrast have basically become a pretense, as the actual standard is defined by Google’s implementation.
    - 7y ago
jetti 7y ago
Do you have examples of those standards organizations? The only other one that I have first hand experience with is ANSI and I know they charge for their standards. I have been dealing with X12 EDI and some of the standards for that are close to $1000 and that is for a single file format. The health care X12 standard has dozens of file format standards.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Do you have examples of those standards organizations? WHATWG, IETF, W3C. Not that each doesn't have other issues, but charging through the nose for standards isn't one of them.
  - jetti 7y ago
    Thanks. I'm not sure why I was blanking on IETF and W3C. I was not familiar with WHATWG.
- kelsolaar 7y ago
  ITU standards are usually available free of charge too.

kierank 7y ago

ISO 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 ago
I don't think $100 can really be considered a major roadblock to any technology professional capable of doing a standardized implementation...
- yusyusyus 7y ago
  having a copy of a single ISO standard is virtually never gonna work. too many references.
  - rightbyte 7y ago
    Also 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 ago
  In 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.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  $100 isn't a roadblock to a funded implementation effort, but that's not the only meaningful interaction a functioning society can or should have with a standard. $100 is a large roadblock to many other types of meaningful interaction.
  - la_barba 7y ago
    "What they should be" is always an arguable position. We can only hold them accountable to their own charter.
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      Why on earth would you think that? I don't give one whit about their charter. Neither should you. In all likelihood, neither do they.
      - la_barba 7y ago
        Because I'm not an idealist, and I don't want to be one. I'd like to think I'm a practical person who looks at what can be done realistically. It has worked out OK for me so far. YMMV.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > I don't think $100 can really be considered a major roadblock to any technology professional capable of doing a standardized implementation... The problem is: the time when people learn most about programming is as students when they have too much time and hardly any money.
- kierank 7y ago
  There's no driver for XQD cards in Linux because of a $100 specification for example
mrozel 7y ago
This has always been my opinion. Plus, I've found them ripe with anti-patterns that contradict what they actual iso standards stand for.
- holy_city 7y ago
  Can you provide some examples?

rayiner 7y ago

Like W3C? “Standards” funded by Google’s ad monopoly? How is that going for them? The demand for everything to be “free” is destroying the idea of neutral standard. Standard must be funded somehow. The ISO model has worked for decades. The W3C model, where you don’t charge for either the standard or the products, has become a tire fire.

jjoonathan 7y ago
Open standards organizations in general and the W3C in particular were in full swing long before Google existed and will continue to do meaningful work long after Google's ad monopoly gets broken up or disrupted into irrelevance. It takes a special kind of singlemindedness to look at modern web standards and the open source WebKit ecosystem, dismiss their wild, outsized success as a tire fire, and call for more corporate exclusivity as the solution.
pcwalton 7y ago
The W3C's failures pale in comparison to what I hear of the ISO MPEG process, in which companies compete to put as much of their patented technology in the codec standard as possible without any regard for coherence. ISO is worse than the W3C.
- tombert 7y ago
  It's even worse than that; the way you end up getting a license to these patented codecs (that are now part of the standard), you end up buying access to codec pools from groups like MPEG-LA. This isn't inherently bad, but the price of buying a license to these pools doesn't typically decrease, even when some (or most) of the patents in that pool expire.
- rayiner 7y ago
  ISO at least still releases real standards with multiple implementations. Web standards by contrast have basically become a pretense, as the actual standard is defined by Google’s implementation.
  - 7y ago

jetti 7y ago

Do you have examples of those standards organizations? The only other one that I have first hand experience with is ANSI and I know they charge for their standards. I have been dealing with X12 EDI and some of the standards for that are close to $1000 and that is for a single file format. The health care X12 standard has dozens of file format standards.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Do you have examples of those standards organizations? WHATWG, IETF, W3C. Not that each doesn't have other issues, but charging through the nose for standards isn't one of them.
- jetti 7y ago
  Thanks. I'm not sure why I was blanking on IETF and W3C. I was not familiar with WHATWG.
kelsolaar 7y ago
ITU standards are usually available free of charge too.