[ethin]

Yeah, I'm curious about this too. I would think that making a standard freely available (and at most doing what NVMe does where you pay membership dues) would make the standard be adopted far more universally than putting up weird barriers to even access the standard.

[throwaway2037]

    > and at most doing what NVMe does where you pay membership dues

No trolling: What is the difference between "pay[ing] membership dues" and paying a fee to access the standard (docs)? To me, they feel the same.

[ethin]

Honest answer (since your not trolling): The difference is more of time than anything else. If I somehow find $5000 to buy access to the PCIe spec, my understanding is that it's per access request. NVMe doesn't charge at all for their specifications; instead, you can join for just $500 per year last time I checked.