Participation in the IETF is mostly free - you can join the mailing lists and discuss the drafts. What costs is going to the physical meetings: there’s an atten

Participation in the IETF is mostly free - you can join the mailing lists and discuss the drafts. What costs is going to the physical meetings: there’s an attendance fee, as well as costs for travel and accommodation, etc. So, in effect, IETF standards are paid for by the employers of people who participate in the IETF, in terms of giving them time to do so and paying for them to go to the meetings. There are reasonable conflict-of-interest rules for ISOC staff, who are required to be clear when they are speaking on behalf of ISOC or in a personal capacity. Although ISOC provides additional funding, they do not oversee the IETF standards process. That job is done by the working group chairs and by the IESG (aka the IETF area directors) who are nominated by people who attend IETF meetings.