“The ISO Central Secretariat does not provide free copies of standards” | Hacker News Reader

“The ISO Central Secretariat does not provide free copies of standards”

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54 pointstolmasky8 comments

ISO Working Groups that want their Standards known and used publish a "Final Draft International Standard" ahead of the ISO, that differs from ISO's only on the cover page. For examples, SC22/WG14 C Programming Language and SC22/WG21 C++ Programming Language both do this.

The other information you need is Defect Reports, which contain point revisions to address problems found after FDIS publication. These are also available online.

The entire C++ spec, as-is eventually submitted to ISO, is developed in the open on GitHub

I've never had to consult the full text of a standard but I've known for many years that you have to pay in order to access the full text. It's always stricken me as strange if the goal is to get everybody to adopt them, but I guess that's how they finance the organisation.

The most annoying thing about this is, that, in Germany, some standards are the law but you still have to pay for them.

It has always been like that, but it seems anachronistic to pay for international standard documents when the world of software has realized long ago that open access is the way to go when it comes to industry-wide agreements.

Institutions like IEEE, IETF and basically all modern programming languages have open access to standards and documentation, and that doesn't mean that the quality of work is any less good.

Sure, there are closed standards like UEFI et al, but engineers know that's the wrong way to do it. These closed standards happen because corporate and legal departments have more weight than engineering.

The expense is trivial, but keeps out the riff raff. If you can't be bothered to pay for a standard, it's even more unlikely you will pay for the patent pool required to realized your product.

>riff raff

The expense is less trivial when you are a startup trying to understand a market, and you have many market segments to explore, and all of the regulations are ISO documents.

I’m sure you didn’t mean that a startup is “riff raff,” but it is true that pay to know laws create friction against new entrants when you have to spend thousands on standards just to understand what the law requires.

It’s also true that new companies aren’t always experienced in these fields. Does that make them “riff raff?”

Not just international standards. In some US states the codes (part of the law by inclusion) are the proprietary property of private companies and are only available under non disclosure.

For example the building codes in Texas. It’s how cartels are protected by government.

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