I'm going to say this as politely as I am able: closed standards can eat a big, steaming plate of shit. If it's not open, it doesn't exist. Period.
Besides from that technicality though, do you really think that publicly available standards would have changed the situation? I don't think so---Chrome (and to be clear, most other browsers) has supported tons of closed standards anyway.
No. A closed standard is not a standard.
> Besides from that technicality though, do you really think that publicly available standards would have changed the situation? I don't think so---Chrome (and to be clear, most other browsers) has supported tons of closed standards anyway.
I think it might have helped, yes.
Please elaborate.
But I wouldn't say it's a "closed" standard. Not any more closed than, say, the C++ standard or the Unicode standard. What makes a standard open is not the price the publisher puts on the copies, imo, but how transparent and open the process is to design and change the standard, and whether it is possible or not to implement and use the standard for free or not. In that regard, I would consider JPEG XL just as open a standard as C++ or Unicode.
The HEVC spec is publicly available without paywall, but you cannot freely implement and use this standard since it's a patent encumbered, very non-royalty-free codec. I consider it a closed standard for that reason, and the spec being available for free (but not implementable without paying royalties) does not make much of a difference imo.
The original JPEG standard is an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 10918) with payed access.
MP3 is also an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 13818-3). Perhaps not as relevant today but was once used by basically everyone.
Access to the standard is only relevant to the implementer. It's of no consequence to users of a piece of software.
Open Standard does not mean Free Standard. As much as I would want the Final Spec 1.0 to be freely available.