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Comment by rjsw | Hacker News Reader

ISO doesn't write the text of the standard, that is done by members of the individual Technical Committees and Working Groups.

I am currently a member of TC184/SC4 and have also been a member of TC22/SC31.

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I hope you don't mind my asking this, but as a member of technical committees, do you ever get compensated for your time and expertise? Or is it simply a case of being paid by your employer to fulfill this role? Does any of the income from standards access ever make its way back to you, your employer, or other members?

None of the income from the sale of standards gets back to their creators. The model is no different really to that of how publishers control access to academic journals, you don't get paid directly for writing a standard or for reviewing and writing ballot comments on ones written by other people.

For the TC22/SC31 work I was just being paid by my employer and they provided the travel costs to meetings.

The scope of TC184/SC4 is much bigger, the core people work on it pretty much full time and get paid by industry consortia to deliver something that will meet their needs. Some parts have been written by postgraduate students who got their PhD out of the work.

ISO is in charge of forming these WGs/TCs and taking their output. When ISO WGs/TCs do a poor job, and ISO approves it, it's ISO's fault.

Anyone who wants to contribute can join a WG. Voting on whether to approve something is done by member nations. The ISO central secretariat does contribute editorial ballot comments but the WG members can reject them during the ballot review.

So what is "ISO", if not the sum of its "Technical Committees and Working Groups"?

If they write the text of the standard, that means ISO writes the text of the standard.

Would you claim that Elsevier is the sum of everyone in an University ?

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