Whose food are you talking about? The people who write standards are usually paid by their employers (I've seen a few volunteers / enthusiasts too). They have food on the table, and the companies benefit from funding that work. After the work is done, distributing the result is virtually free. There's no need to extort hundreds of dollars for a 30-page PDF whose contents were written two decades ago by salaried employees.

It's reality for IETF (and many other organizations) and I don't see why it couldn't work elsewhere. Somehow we need to find a way to upset the status quo, the same way Let's Encrypt has done for TLS certs and the way open journals are slowly gaining mindshare over extortionist publications.

The challenge with standards is that they remain useful for a long time and you need interoperability (unlike with certs that you renew every year or three and which you can get from any number of CAs). Everyone wants to use the existing and established standards instead of reinventing the wheel, and we can't just copy the existing standards (though maybe we could "recreate" fully compatible standards because you can't copyright facts?). This is not a business problem, this is an entrenchment problem. And I guess there are some (big) companies that benefit from entrenchment and regulatory capture so it's in their interest to maintain the status quo. Naturally, everyone on ISO/IEC/IPC/etc payroll has an interest in maintaining the status quo.

>Whose food are you talking about? The people who write standards are usually paid by their employers

People directly employed by ISO ?

The purpose of a standard is to aid the betterment of all users of it. The development of a standard should be supported by the funds which would be saved by the existence of a standard.

Note that those who benefit from the existence of a standard is not only the participating companies, but also often the public at large, over a long period of time. This is why the government should contribute to the funds necessary to develop those standards.

If there are standards which would not save enough money for either the companies involved or the public at large, those standards have no business being developed.

I wholeheartedly agree. But the moment we get to government, we ran into politics. And this isn't local government either but International level. And navigating government and politics is about hundreds times harder than getting companies to together and donate. Which in itself is no small feat.

On one hand I wish a single government, EU or US will fund the whole thing and be proud and say it is such a pathetic small amount of money for so much good we are doing it anyway. Gets point for some international recognition or political power or whatever politicians wants.

On the other hand you know this wont happen.

And maybe we should have to navigate the legitimately elected international governments over standards that almost always slant the field.