ISO should make all standards Publicly Available

I completely agree.

As a mechanical engineer it makes my blood boil when I cannot access a standard. It's rent seeking at best.

Sure my organisation pays for many of the subscriptions, but not infrequently I come across one that isn't and it immediately stymies my work. I have to contact the bureaucracy and convince them to spend $500+ on something that may be completely useless. (it's sometimes unclear how useful or strict a referenced standard is)

I can only imagine how hard it would be for the general public to navigate.

The European Union has publicly available engineering standards. That is a step in the right direction and every country(or federation) should follow suit.

It's a real bummer when a public organization (like the government) demands ISO-compliance on something as they're only putting another brick in their profit wall.

And they can be quite expensive, at $100 or so /each, sometimes you deal with a bunch of standards from the same category and have to pay $1000s just to be able to read them. Complete nonsense.

This would be so welcomed - it almost seems like the idea of paying for standards goes against the spirit of standardization and also prevent wider adoption. Imagine if we had to pay to pay to read the precise definition of kg.

This is probably in place to fund the ISO organizations and test equipment maintenance and upgrades, the documents could be made free to access if governments agreed to maintain funding tied to technology costs etc. It would be a useful part of the UN maybe?

I'm glad this is getting attention.

These ISO standards are legislation in a lot of countries. If you wish to sell a product which falls under their remit you are legally required to be compliant

But the only way to know you're compliant is to give the standards body hundreds of £/€/$ to read the standard. And then it references another standard which you also need to buy. Etc. Etc.

If you actually follow all the references you could easily spend thousands on standards alone, just to design and sell something legally.

How else would ISO make the “beelions” of dollars they need to fund the Universe?

Oh, sorry. They don’t need to fund the Universe, they’re supposedly an NGO for setting international standards that is funded by the governments around the world, right?

And they shouldn’t need “beelions” of dollars to do that, right?

Seriously, the whole funding/cost structure of the ISO is something that has annoyed me for decades. But I don’t see this situation changing any time soon — if ever.

If you want wide standardization, share the specifications. Erecting a paywall around standards is the antithesis of promulgation.

Have run into "documentation for the standard costs $$" many times over the years in different organizations, large and small; it is always a barrier to adoption.

Ah, reminds me of that date-time issues between RFC and ISO standards.

I agree completely.