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Comment by jcelerier

20 hours ago

As the article says:

> “International standards have a special status,” says Phil Wennblom, Chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1. “Even though RISC-V is already globally recognized, once something becomes an ISO/IEC standard, it’s even more widely accepted. Countries around the world place strong emphasis on international standards as the basis for their national standards. It’s a significant tailwind when it comes to market access.”

Says that, but I don't agree with that. If anything it would have been less successful being picked up in discount markets if the specs weren't free for download, and I don't know what fringes they're trying to break into but probably none of them care whether the spec is ISO.

  • That can depend on how the spec gets made into an ISO standard. There is a process called "harvesting" that can allow the original author to continue to distribute an existing specification independently of ISO.

  • > Says that, but I don't agree with that

    I guess you just never had to fill in a grant application where you have to justify that you are using official standards so that you can get money

Usual lies. There are a plethora of largely ignored international standards. Making it an international standard is just one of many ways to achieve the wide worldwide acception and still has a high failure rate.