Comment by jogux

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.