Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive?

Re:Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive? by michaelt on Thursday June 13, 2019 @12:28PM (#20176402)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive? by tracker1 on Thursday June 13, 2019 @01:42PM (#20177069)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive? by SahAssar on Thursday June 13, 2019 @04:45PM (#20178417)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: Why are ISO standards so expensive? by dwheeler on Thursday June 13, 2019 @01:39PM (#20177037)

I think that's exactly correct. It's more than inertia; they are being paid to not update their polices, so they're incentivized to not do so... even though their policies inhibit the use of standards (their purported goal).

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