> standard writers usually do all the work for free
this is a nonsense claim - in almost all cases they’re paid by their employers.
this is a nonsense claim - in almost all cases they’re paid by their employers.
Yes, the writer is typically employed by a relevant company. They're not working for free. But the body from which you must buy the standard is getting it for free.
This is exactly the same problem academia is facing. The big journal companies charge huge amounts for access to journals, but don't pay for their production. That's funded by universities.
In both cases, the bodies collating these documents are rent seekers making far more money than their services are worth.
The standards body _is_ its members. It's not practically a separate company - it's a vehicle for the members.
For details, check out their 2020 financials page: https://www.iso.org/ar2020.html#section-finances
I am only highlighting how proceeds from the sale of ISO standards are not being distributed to ISO members, including national standardization bodies, nor any contributors.
I'd hope that country ISO members would push for their membership fees to cover for distribution of standards for free (even if it meant increasing those fees) — that'd be a much more sensible approach IMHO. Or they could optimize slightly not to need those royalty fees in the first place.
To add insult to injury, some of those "employers" actually pay further fees to standardization bodies.
Isn’t this normal in life? Most people are paid salaries or contracts for a job, not a proportion of sales.
An engineer at Google is paid to build an advert system but they don’t get a proportion of the advert fees.
> some of those "employers" actually pay further fees
Why have you put employers in scare quotes? Do you doubt they’re employing anyone?
And they don’t have to put anyone on the committee writing the standard if they don’t want to.
The company may have employees that write the standard, that's immaterial. You're equating "Author" with "Employee" rather than "Company"
It's not supposed to be a money-making opportunity.
Or they could become more frugal. Eg. simply by removing the overhead of managing *sale" of electronic documents, they could optimize at least a little bit.
Membership fees are stable, yet royalties are fluctuating. As a non-profit, they've got to end the year on 0, so they'll always spend whatever they earn.
And? If the authors didn't think they got any benefits—or rather, the companies employing the authors and paying them—didn't think they got any benefit, then they wouldn't make the work on ISO standards part of their job.
Just because the benefit is non-financial does no mean there is not benefit.
People have recognized that having common standards is a general benefit to society. For a history of this see Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting Since 1880 by Craig Murphy and JoAnne Yates (ISBN 9781421440033):
* https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/engineering-rules
ISO has bills and overhead to cover, just like anyone else. Just because some of its work is covered by 'donated' effort doesn't mean all of it can.
(I wouldn't object to having ISO standards being freely available, it's just that I can see some reasons for why they are not.)
I guess what we perceive differently is how much work is "donated": I'd say most of it is (which does not make your statement untrue, but "some" implies a lesser part of it).
Nobody is doubting the need for common standards and the need to pay for them: this is why there are membership fees, and ISO has collected half of its revenue on those — https://www.iso.org/ar2020.html#section-finances. IMHO, it should optimize in a way to make its entire operations possible on that revenue (if that involves increasing fees or becoming more frugal is up to them).
I'm not against the standards being freely available if it can be arranged, I just find it slightly annoying that many people seem to be acting like ISO is some moustache-twirling, evil mega-corp that is exploiting the workers because it charges a fee currently.
Nobody is acting as if they are exploiting anyone, but many are unaware of the situation above. Whether one finds that fair is up to everyone individually, but perhaps you can allow that finding it unfair is a reasonable viewpoint as well?