RE: w3c and ISO standards - why did I pay for the standard?

40260 was submitted by W3C to ISO/IEC as a "PAS" (publicly available standard). Essentially that requests ISO/IEC to accept it 'as is' and add an additional cover page when accessed through ISO, indicating the endorsement of ISO/IEC. So if the existing standard is freely available without that cover sheet, then that will not change.

https://www.w3.org/2010/08/ws-pas.html
https://www.w3.org/2011/07/wspas-pr.html

Also note this list of freely available ISO/IEC standards (the exact criteria for going on this list are a bit murky to me):

http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html

I understand the general disdain within the research community for 'standards that you have to pay for' - particularly in CS/IT where there is a convention of openness. However, if you compare them with scholarly publications, which you need to consult and then cite in your own work, then the difference between ISO standards and journal articles from Elsevier, Springer etc is essentially whether your university library has a subscription or not. ISO is just a publisher like Elsevier, and has to cover its costs (though it doesn't make any profit).

I also understand that ISO standards have not been seen as "scholarly publications", so university libraries generally do not subscribe, but that classification is one that may be worth questioning. The standards I've been involved in writing have undergone a significantly more rigorous review procedure than any journal article. I had >1000 comments to resolve on one of them.

Simon Cox

From: Chris Leighton [mailto:chris.leighton@uwa.edu.au]
Sent: Friday, 3 February, 2017 12:48
To: semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: w3c and ISO standards - why did I pay for the standard?

Dear all,

After searching a number of w3c email archives and elsewhere I organised to pay an ISO standards reseller for a licence to:

ISO/IEC 40260:2011 - Information technology -- W3C Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Metadata

which resulted in a strange path to the public web page:
https://www.w3.org/TR/ws-addr-metadata/
So, although many of you may have known of this, for the others, don't bother paying. Lesson learned.
It is interesting to note that there was no mention of ISO via 'w3c search' or mention of ISO in the w3c page.
Is anyone aware of anything published where other w3c standards have been 'secretly' co-opted into ISO standards, it may save us some cash-ola.
Regards,

Chris<http://www.uwa.edu.au/people/chris.leighton>.