
Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive? - spiffistan
Or, why are they not free?<p>Many times during my professional career I&#x27;ve wanted to read the underlying standard for a product or a system, and I can&#x27;t ever be bothered to cough up the ~100 CHF they seem to demand. As a result I&#x27;ve never actually read a standard.
======
andrewaylett
I've been part of a team developing C++ compilers and run-time libraries. We
used the final draft, which (at least for C++) is freely available. I suspect
anyone relying on the final text (were it to differ from the last public
draft) would be disappointed to discover that pretty much no-one uses it.

It doesn't seem to me to be a terrible trade-off to say that ad-hoc use via
public drafts is fine, but if you need to use the actual spec for whatever
reason then you're probably being paid to abide by the spec and it makes sense
to charge for it.

Where I strenuously object to non-public specifications is where they're
referenced in (and required by) legislation: if ignorance of the law is no
excuse, the law had better be freely available.

~~~
radford-neal
_... anyone relying on the final text... would be disappointed to discover
that pretty much no-one uses it._

Indeed! A "standard" that costs $100 to read is not actually a standard at
all. The standard is, by definition, what the users think it is.

------
jjoonathan
Many other standards organizations have figured out funding models that don't
shut out hobbyists, the interested public, academics, and professionals with
tangential (rather than direct, funded) interest. ISO has not. They are behind
the times in this regard.

~~~
rayiner
Like W3C? “Standards” funded by Google’s ad monopoly? How is that going for
them? The demand for everything to be “free” is destroying the idea of neutral
standard. Standard must be funded somehow. The ISO model has worked for
decades. The W3C model, where you don’t charge for either the standard or the
products, has become a tire fire.

~~~
pcwalton
The W3C's failures pale in comparison to what I hear of the ISO MPEG process,
in which companies compete to put as much of their patented technology in the
codec standard as possible without any regard for coherence. ISO is worse than
the W3C.

~~~
rayiner
ISO at least still releases real standards with multiple implementations. Web
standards by contrast have basically become a pretense, as the actual standard
is defined by Google’s implementation.

~~~
pcwalton
I mean, to some degree that's true, but that's not anything the W3C can do
anything about. It's just the nature of the browser market at this time.

As an example, C++, also an ISO standard, has notoriously few full
implementations, and as a result C++ is largely defined by "what GCC/Clang
accept" in practice.

------
brandmeyer
IEC standards are also expensive. However, there's a hack available. Denmark
has incorporated many of the international IEC standards as national standards
"by-value". They are also available at a much lower price than the IEC
standards.

So if you buy the ~100 USD DS-60950-1, you'll find a Danish cover page
followed by the otherwise 900 CHF IEC/EN-60950-1 (the International/Eurozone
IT equipment electrical safety standard), which also happens to be harmonized
with the ~2500 USD UL-60950-1 (The American IT equipment electrical safety
standard).

~~~
Tomte
ANSI used to have several interesting standards (C, C++) as PDF for 30 dollars
each. Unfortunately, they upped their prices considerably.

------
octocode
The fee is to pay for the ISO's operating costs of maintaining and
distributing the standards. They do have a section of publicly available
standards, if you're interested:
[https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/](https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/)

~~~
tinus_hn
They probably have a gold web server that can only be powered by the tears of
albino giraffes. For the price they charge for distributing one standard once,
normal organizations can distribute files to anyone who asks essentially
forever.

~~~
michaelt
I suspect (although I've made no effort to verify this) that some standards
organisations were set up in the days of paper copies and secretaries and
typists, when they _needed_ a 10-storey office building [1]. So naturally they
set up a pricing structure reflecting those expenses.

Then they kept the employee numbers and pricing structure due to institutional
inertia.

[1]
[https://goo.gl/maps/MK3C9AUgzV16Svem8](https://goo.gl/maps/MK3C9AUgzV16Svem8)

~~~
tracker1
There's more to an organizations overhead than just the web servers. There's
staff, reviewers, publishers, editors, etc. Of course, it's probably still
most likely over-priced, and I have no insight into ISO's operational funding
or internals.

~~~
SahAssar
Do ISO handle proofreading, editing and so on? My impression was that they
mostly did publishing, which has become less and less of a cost center.

------
theincredulousk
TBH I think IEEE is worse than ISO. After a fairly hefty yearly membership
fee, they want you to pay for individual specs that other IEEE members
created???

I needed to look at a 15+ year old IEEE spec, and thought "hey I'm a member,
certainly I have access to it!". Nope. They wanted like $50 from a _member_.
For a 15+ year old spec.

I let my membership lapse after that. Just couldn't figure out a way that it
was worth $250+ year.

------
chopete
Can think of 2 reasons why it is not free.

a. These are meant for a business to show off its compliance. A business means
it is already making money. I am sure every company would be happy to pay that
100CHF to buy it for you , just like they can afford to buy a book, if they
are thinking about ISO.

b. The ISO compliance is to be asserted by a 3rd party auditor. They are a
member of the ISO community and/or have a copy of the standard with them.

~~~
number6
I am ok with a), but b): how should I comply with something I don't know.
Sometimes I have to comply by law. What is this the soviet union?

------
s1mon
I've often thought that if standards organizations were truly interested in
encouraging the use of their standards, they would make them freely available
and recover their operation costs some other way. Even worse than the
standards orgs themselves is IHS which acts as an electronic library
(gatekeeper troll) for these orgs. In theory they are providing a service of
managing electronic copies of expensive standards so that a big company
doesn't get into licensing/copyright violations, but really all they're doing
is adding overhead on top of stuff which should be free in the first place.

At one point the orgs were covering printing and shipping costs, but with
electronic downloads and PDFs, it's really crazy to charge $$$ for a standard,
especially when it doesn't include updates.

A couple exception to this madness: US government stuff (e.g. Mil-Std) which
by law is all copyright free and downloadable, and USB.org is surprisingly and
pleasantly just available for download.

~~~
buckminster
All the ITU ASN.1 specs are free. Maybe other ITU specs, I haven't looked.

------
TomJansen
Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a site just like SciHub but only for ISO
(and other) standards?

~~~
weinzierl
It's called Library Genesis.

Ok, it's not really a SciHub for standards, but it is in the same spirit. Most
people don't order standards from the ISO, they get them from their
organization's (university or corporation) library. Very much the same as for
papers.

What can you do if you are not affiliated with any organization that provides
access? You can turn for SciHub for papers and to LibGen as your library.
Needless to mention that both are infringing copyright and may or may not be
legal for you to use.

------
bbatha
Its also worth noting that you can basically find all of the standards in
their draft forms for free. You need to be slightly careful about the revision
numbers, but often the drafts are identical to the ISO ones. You really only
need to pay for the draft if you want to be certified as in compliance or are
an enterprise user. In which case the fee is paltry.

~~~
UglyToad
Is there a way to search for these? I've tried trawling through many sites to
find draft versions of ISO 32000-2:2017 but it seems to have fallen down a
memory hole. Is there a naming convention around drafts or is it just luck of
the draw?

Apologies is this is not a valid query.

~~~
bbatha
luck unfortunately :(

------
gumby
I know this question relates to the scandal of standards _documents_ , but
unlike the IETF it's possible to write ISO standards that are essentially
proprietary by including various patent encumbrances, making them
prohibitively expensive to _implement_. IEEE standards are particularly
terrible in this regard.

------
kierank
Nominally to cover the costs of production. However, this is a convenient
barrier to entry for Open Source and amateur developers that many companies
who are standards participants don't object to.

------
w8rbt
When you do buy an individual copy, it comes with your name printed in the
footer of every page. I had a copy of one once (won't say which one) and I
could not let my boss read it. For many topics, national standards (like NIST)
are great. They are free too.

Edit: We went with individual purchases because the group license was way too
expensive. Had we paid for that, then we could have shared the docs with upto
X employees.

~~~
tracker1
I'm not sure how they can restrict you from lending such things, unless you've
signed a contract specifically saying so. Copyright cannot be used that way,
at least in the US.

------
weinzierl
I don't like the high prices either and wish these were available for free. At
least the demand to have them for free is not unreasonable given that a large
part of the work that goes in the standards is ultimately financed by tax
money.

But to answer your question: Because the primary customers are organizations
who are willing to pay. Individuals that are not affiliated with one of the
paying organizations are not considered, unfortunately.

From a practical point of view it is not hard to get access. My experience is:
As long as I was a student or an employee of a university the library provided
me access and I was allowed to copy the standards as long as I needed them for
my studies. When I left university I could still get a library card for the
library and I could read the standards as long as I wanted but I wasn't
allowed to copy them. Also every bigger company I worked for provided access.
At least that's my experience.

------
shmerl
Usual parasite approach. Accessing standards should for sure be free for
everyone.

~~~
la_barba
Why should it be free? What is your rationale?

~~~
shmerl
Because standards are not products. They should enable things, not to be used
for profit. Profiteering from that hinders progress. It should be quite self
explanatory.

~~~
la_barba
Many standards are simply guidelines or arbitrary rules. Someone just makes it
up. For e.g. i++ has a specific meaning according to a language standard. Or
the width of a door should be 36" inches. That is something someone just made
up. You can make up a standard yourself. Other kinds of standards have years
of work behind them, like engineering standards for bridges, or food safety
standards. Someone has to pay the people to do the work. There is nothing
inherently free or non-free about them.

The other important thing here is being able to read the standard gets you
nowhere. You have to implement the standard, and an independent third party
has to verify that you have implemented them. Someone has to pay for all this
work. It would be nice if this was tax payer supported, but if the government
isn't going to pay for it, maybe you would like to setup an international fund
to contribute? I'm sure they would love to make them free of charge.

>They should enable things, not to be used for profit. Profiteering from that
hinders progress. It should be quite self explanatory.

I want to pay the people who work on the standards. Profits help with that.
Ergo, profits help progress. QED :)

BTW, ISO standards have been for-pay for years. Please explain specifically
how it has hindered progress. Some data would be nice. The burden of proof is
on you, given the decades of counter-factual evidence.

~~~
shmerl
Someone already pays for the work of making standards. And it's not ISO.

Someone has to pay for the work for implementing them too, but not for
accessing the standard itself. Lot's of things were not free, because of
someone trying to sit in the middle, where they shouldn't have.

~~~
la_barba
I don't think you quite understand how ISO works, so its not really productive
to have this conversation. Have a nice day.

~~~
shmerl
It's clearly not working right, if it's still charging for actual access.

------
number6
Yeah ISO are de facto laws and the should be free

------
FrozenVoid
Very few programmers care about standards and even downloading drafts of them
- despite all these forum/mailing lists arguments "what/which code is
standard"( a tiny vocal minority), their market is likely some sort of
enterprise bureaucrats that must have the Official(TM) Standard(TM) printed in
triplicate to bully local programmers into following it "up to legal code". If
the standards were free, i guess they're going to be a bit more popular,
however thats too late to change programmer culture[1] which evolved without
them - so standards organizations don't have much of an incentive to make them
public domain. [1] Compiler manuals are what people using as standard, and
standards eventually adopt compiler features.

~~~
zaarn
Programmers care a lot about standards; we just have more open standards like
RFCs and W3C/WHATWG.

------
dwheeler
Because ISO likes free money. In most cases ISO doesn't pay the authors and
reviewers of standards, so instead of posting the document for free, it gets
to indefinitely receive 100% of the profit from the work. It's a sweet deal
for ISO, and a terrible deal for the rest of the world. ISO's paywall makes it
very difficult to _apply_ their standards. It's essentially an anti-
standardization stance, not what you'd expect from a standards body. It's
especially a problem because today's complex systems depend on millions of
agreements that need to be standardized (not necessarily by ISO).

More generally: If a publisher charges money for a document, you should ask if
the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a royalty on the profit. If
the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a (decent) royalty, then
that's a decent justification for the charge. If the authors/employers are not
getting paid, then that looks suspiciously like an exploitative relationship.
ISO is in the latter camp. Que bene?

I'll use ISO standards, and if my employer pays me I'll participate in an ISO
process. But I strongly prefer working with standards organizations who have
changed their processes to fit the 21st century. Today many people's
expectation is that a standards body will make the standards freely available,
since there's no excuse to do otherwise. ISO fails that test, and instead has
a big paywall. The historical justification was to support a printing press,
but that is completely unnecessary today (just post the PDF or HTML, that's
all we need!). ISO _will_ occasionally release standards freely (e.g., the Ada
language specification and the Common Criteria were ISO standards that ISO
_agreed_ would be freely available even on initial ratification). But you have
to work for it. Other standards-setting bodies, like the IETF, are typically
wiser choices for developing standards.

I hope that someday ISO will change their policies. But as long as they're
getting lots of free money, based primarily on work by people they don't pay,
it's not clear why they would change.

~~~
la_barba
>Today many people's expectation is that a standards body will make the
standards freely available, since there's no excuse to do otherwise.

How many people have this expectation and how do you know?

------
la_barba
I view ISO standards as a tax on companies who are willing to stand by their
product and processes. Modulo obvious caveats, if they can get
certification/compliance/accreditation , the end user can have a modicum of
confidence when dealing with the business. It lets you buy toys for your child
with a peace of mind, or get into a car with ISO certified airbags, or buy
network equipment for your server build, etc etc. Its trivial to point out
flaws in any system, its not easy to propose something better that you can
actually implement in the real world.

------
lathiat
Sometimes you can access standards from a library. Not sure how common that is
for ISO but maybe look it up.

~~~
wolfgke
I asked at my local university library in Germany: they can't be accessed
there.

------
Scene_Cast2
On one hand, I ran into this myself a couple of times (needed to spec some
tolerances for shafts and holes; wanted to find laboratory glassware specs).
Didn't end up getting them since it was a one-off query each time.

On the other, you have to admit that they do a much better job of making money
for the value they provide, compared to e.g. compiler developers. (Just from a
cold capitalistic viewpoint. I don't philosophically agree with not having a
free way to get started with programming.)

------
danmg
there are torrents that have all the standards...

~~~
wolfgke
Where?

~~~
danmg

      magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F046266BE1BFB1528A6C766526A8B17254059429&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.t-ru.org%2Fann%3Fmagnet&dn=ISO%20standards%20%2F%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D0%98%D0%A1%D0%9E%20(%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)%20%5B1973-2017.%20PDF%2C%20ENG%5D
    

edit: nice emo downvotes. Torrents today. Torrents Tomorrow. Torrents Forever!
They're the only cloud that matters.

~~~
number6
There should be a scihub for isos

~~~
danmg
hard to search for since they're numbered, and people collect the ones that
are relevant to them personally

~~~
arm
Unfortunately, that torrent doesn’t seem to include all the standards. For
example, none of these seem to be included:

[http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC35/WG1/](http://www.open-
std.org/JTC1/SC35/WG1/)

~~~
NikkiA
If you still have it, can you check for ISO-1000 being there?

~~~
throwawaymememe
This seems to be a copy (no idea how exact the copy is):
[https://archive.org/details/gov.in.is.10005.1994/page/n5](https://archive.org/details/gov.in.is.10005.1994/page/n5)

~~~
NikkiA
That's ISO-10005, ISO-1000 is the specification of STEbus which was a CPU
semi-agnostic version of STDbus (which was Z80 specific).

~~~
throwawaymee
I first searched for it on Wikipedia here[1] and then searched for the title.

STEbus seems to be IEEE 1000 and ISO 10859, perhaps you got confused with the
numbers?

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_1000](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_1000)

------
strongbond
Because it costs money to sustain the armies of talentless paper-pushers who
work for these organisations.

