Comment by 8n4vidtmkvmk
8 months ago
"Standard" and "costs money" feel at odds with each other. If you want something to become standard, as in the standard/most common way of doing something, it has to be abundantly accessible so that it can be widely implemented.
It's a double edged sword. Actually creating a good standard that people want to use through an open process that aims to be unbiased takes a non-trivial amount of time and hence costs a not insubstantial amount of money. Different standards organisations have chosen different approaches to solving that problem, and although I completely agree and freely available standards are my preferred approach, it is also very clear that ISO standards are well respected and widely used despite the need to pay to view them in some cases.
Some kind of funding model where large corporations can pay to have a standard written would be ideal. Even then it seems a bit odd. Web APIs don't seem to have this problem. Just have the big corps donate some engineers instead. I don't know, I guess nothing is perfect.