[CuriousNinja]

> never actually read the ISO 8601 spec ... because it's not free

I was very surprised to discover this. Why are they charging money for the specification of a date format? I would expect standards like these to be published in public domain.

[JdeBP]

Aside from the fact that you are conflating copyright with price, note that many standards organizations charge money for copies of their standards documents.

ISO charges roughly 20 times the price of a paperback book for a 33 page document. You can buy BS/ISO 8601-1:2019 from the BSI for an even more exorbitant £246. Standards Australia will sell the older 2007 version to you for a mere AUD165.

But this is not special. All standards documents cost money from these organizations, from dates and times to electrical plugs. Treasure the fact that you can (for example) get (some) ECMA standards from ECMA for free. It isn't the norm.

[mercurywells]

IEEE publishes several standards for free via their IEEE Get Program

[kube-system]

ISO finances their operations by selling documentation, subscription from members, etc. The point of ISO standards is to facilitate international trade. The intended audience for these standards are large multinational companies.

[ska]

Pretty much all the standards bodies I know of are financed through sales of the standards documents. It's not a bad system, in the end the commercial entities who end up needing them most pay for their development and upkeep.