As an editor of ISO/IEC 18181 (JPEG XL), I politely yet strongly disagree with this ISO policy of paywalling standards. It is an adoption obstacle and an incentive to use outdated drafts.
The core of the problem is that we somehow put a private Swiss company in charge of international standardization. Of course that company needs to make money _somehow_ to pay its staff. But that would better be done via government subsidies than via selling specs.
In a way, this reminds me a lot of academic publishing. It's not the publishers who write the papers, yet they get to paywall science.
We need open access standards, just like we need open access scientific journals.
The core of the problem is that we somehow put a private Swiss company in charge of international standardization. Of course that company needs to make money _somehow_ to pay its staff. But that would better be done via government subsidies than via selling specs.
In a way, this reminds me a lot of academic publishing. It's not the publishers who write the papers, yet they get to paywall science.
We need open access standards, just like we need open access scientific journals.