[young_unixer]

It has always been like that, but it seems anachronistic to pay for international standard documents when the world of software has realized long ago that open access is the way to go when it comes to industry-wide agreements.

Institutions like IEEE, IETF and basically all modern programming languages have open access to standards and documentation, and that doesn't mean that the quality of work is any less good.

Sure, there are closed standards like UEFI et al, but engineers know that's the wrong way to do it. These closed standards happen because corporate and legal departments have more weight than engineering.