[btown]

Both can be true. Promoting a standard isn’t free, and having licensing and certification fees, especially in an industry where such practices make a standardization org get taken more seriously, is a reasonable strategy. We’re lucky that our industry moved in a different direction!

[dare944]

IP licensing and certification are entirely separate from access to standards documentation. Of course certifying conformance to a standard is going to have a cost. But publishing documentation that has already been written is effectively free.