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You would need someone high up in ISO to feel strongly enough about that to take the revenue hit. My only experience with ISO standards is the C++ standard, an

You would need someone high up in ISO to feel strongly enough about that to take the revenue hit. My only experience with ISO standards is the C++ standard, and the community works around the price by making draft copies available for free. This is a guess on my part, but maybe the majority use case for ISO standards is companies buying copies for their employees or maybe even lawyers. They _have_ to have a copy if they're going to have products that conform to the industry standards, so ISO can charge whatever they want and it's just a minor expense for the business. Compare this with the "hackers in mom's garage" image of software and you see the difference.

ngrilly 2y ago
If the ISO is not willing to change their mind on that question, then let's work with other standard organizations. ISO doesn't have a monopoly, as we've seen with the IETF and the W3C. I've been in the situation of buying copies of these standards in my last two jobs, because we wanted to read and use these standards, because they are "standards" (standards on topics like functional safety, quality, and innovation). But as you can guess, the larger a company is, the more difficult it is to buy anything. And that's the problem with these standards. They can't be standards if people can't read and learn about them. What happens next is that you you have tons of people talking about these standards, without even having read them once, or not being able to check an assumption by going back to the source material. That stuff was ok 30 years ago, but not anymore: this is 2024 and we have Internet and open source.
pc86 2y ago
Sorry to put it this way but what revenue hit? Who exactly is so stupid they'd pay for this standard that nobody asked for, nobody needs, and very few people care about?
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Someone has to organize conferences and protocols for voting, and organize the documents and get them published. Nothing is free, someone has to organize things. The alternative is what? Open Source? Where anybody can fork anything. One person puts out a standard, then another and another and suddenly there is no standard there is just a giant pile of one-off hacks. Any Open Source project that has amounted to anything, guess what, has funding, and an organization. Some gatekeeper to make sure there is one truth. Would SQL Exists today without some 'standards' body : "as standardized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) "
  - pc86 2y ago
    > The alternative is what? Open Source? Where anybody can fork anything. One person puts out a standard, then another and another and suddenly there is no standard there is just a giant pile of one-off hacks. Tell me you don't understand open source software without telling me. Major OSS projects today have funding and corporate backing because the popularity earns you money. Not all major OSS projects start with funding and corporate backing (though some certainly do and that can be a leg up if it's done with good intention).
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Exactly. Popular ones are funded. The point was everyone was complaining about paying for a publication. But how do you fund publishing without paying? Everyone expects 'standards' to be free, but don't they take time and effort and organization? GQL has existed for long time, as open source, and has evolved, with a community. But eventually there is a need to 'pay' to get funding, and industry backing to grow further. And a standards organization is valuable in doing that. Complaining it isn't 'free' is the wrong part.
zvr 2y ago
It's not particularly difficult to have an ISO standard be made freely available and published in https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/in... You simply have to make the decision from the start and keep it through all the ISO approval process. That's how we made SPDX (ISO/IEC 5962:2021) and OpenChain (ISO/IEC 5230:2020) standards.
- ngrilly 2y ago
  It's great that ISO is offering this possibility! But then, why don't we have more ISO standards freely available? Is it because the contributors don't want them to be free available, in order to sell books or trainings?

ngrilly 2y ago

If the ISO is not willing to change their mind on that question, then let's work with other standard organizations. ISO doesn't have a monopoly, as we've seen with the IETF and the W3C. I've been in the situation of buying copies of these standards in my last two jobs, because we wanted to read and use these standards, because they are "standards" (standards on topics like functional safety, quality, and innovation). But as you can guess, the larger a company is, the more difficult it is to buy anything. And that's the problem with these standards. They can't be standards if people can't read and learn about them. What happens next is that you you have tons of people talking about these standards, without even having read them once, or not being able to check an assumption by going back to the source material. That stuff was ok 30 years ago, but not anymore: this is 2024 and we have Internet and open source.

pc86 2y ago

Sorry to put it this way but what revenue hit? Who exactly is so stupid they'd pay for this standard that nobody asked for, nobody needs, and very few people care about?

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Someone has to organize conferences and protocols for voting, and organize the documents and get them published. Nothing is free, someone has to organize things. The alternative is what? Open Source? Where anybody can fork anything. One person puts out a standard, then another and another and suddenly there is no standard there is just a giant pile of one-off hacks. Any Open Source project that has amounted to anything, guess what, has funding, and an organization. Some gatekeeper to make sure there is one truth. Would SQL Exists today without some 'standards' body : "as standardized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) "
- pc86 2y ago
  > The alternative is what? Open Source? Where anybody can fork anything. One person puts out a standard, then another and another and suddenly there is no standard there is just a giant pile of one-off hacks. Tell me you don't understand open source software without telling me. Major OSS projects today have funding and corporate backing because the popularity earns you money. Not all major OSS projects start with funding and corporate backing (though some certainly do and that can be a leg up if it's done with good intention).
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Exactly. Popular ones are funded. The point was everyone was complaining about paying for a publication. But how do you fund publishing without paying? Everyone expects 'standards' to be free, but don't they take time and effort and organization? GQL has existed for long time, as open source, and has evolved, with a community. But eventually there is a need to 'pay' to get funding, and industry backing to grow further. And a standards organization is valuable in doing that. Complaining it isn't 'free' is the wrong part.

zvr 2y ago

It's not particularly difficult to have an ISO standard be made freely available and published in https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/in... You simply have to make the decision from the start and keep it through all the ISO approval process. That's how we made SPDX (ISO/IEC 5962:2021) and OpenChain (ISO/IEC 5230:2020) standards.

ngrilly 2y ago
It's great that ISO is offering this possibility! But then, why don't we have more ISO standards freely available? Is it because the contributors don't want them to be free available, in order to sell books or trainings?