I'm not asking for anything; the postgres documentation is more important to me than the standard and already free. I'm pointing out that the standard isn't intended for implementers or users. By ruling out options, my guess is it is intended for governments to select Oracle DBs rather than alternate (OSS?) DBs - or just to put petty impediments in the way of new DBs trying to get started. Otherwise why is the standard the only component of the entire chain that is not free on the internet? It would be bizarre if ONLY the standards committee needs $$$ to operate. They have the easiest job and there are natural incentives for the different SQL implemeters to cooperate. Why else would the core postgres maintainers be expected to pay 200 francs for the privilege of getting a copy of a standard that they are implementing for free? That way lies madness.

And we know the standards committee would be willing to work for free or people are available who would do the work (indeed, we can probably recover the standard from the postgres docs since they mention the things that aren't standards compliant - https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/features.html). The postgres maintainers do notably more work than the standards committee for free. How hard is it for them and Dr Hipp to throw out a document saying where the common ground is? It is far less work than they've already put in to the free docs. The useful parts SQL standard is an appendix compared to https://www.sqlite.org/docs.html

At least, I assume. As previously mentioned, I've never read the standard and as far as I can tell nobody is allowed to link it for me.

EDIT I feel like I should link some standard here, so in lieu of the SQL standard which I can't link, here is the TCP standard: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc9293.html