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Z̈oé

ALL standards should be available online free of charge.

39 comments
Tom Hodson

@uint8_t I was pretty shocked the first time I heard of the idea of following a standard that isn’t freely available. (It was ISO19115, a standard for geospatial metadata. No surprises that it has terrible tooling)

Many Colors, Many Forms, Many Flavors, Maybe More

@uint8_t@chaos.social How is anycreature supposed to follow the thing if they can't read the text of it? If it's not published, it's not a /standard./

Sonikku

@uint8_t Story of my life. I am sick and tired of ISO making so much money for mere documents that they often don't even do ANY work on.
This whole thing of having to pay a fortune for standards documents is what hinders innovation

Lena Schimmel

@uint8_t In March 2024, the was a ruling by the European Court of Justice, which basically said that all standards that are mandatory for products must be free of charge.

I just looked up what's the current state of this:

There is now an official web site where you can request free access to european standards, and access those that were sucessfully requested by others: ec.europa.eu/transparency/docu

It explicitly says that everyone may use it, not just people in the EU.

(See caveats in replies!)

@uint8_t In March 2024, the was a ruling by the European Court of Justice, which basically said that all standards that are mandatory for products must be free of charge.

I just looked up what's the current state of this:

There is now an official web site where you can request free access to european standards, and access those that were sucessfully requested by others: ec.europa.eu/transparency/docu

Lena Schimmel

@uint8_t But it takes 15 to 30 days to process a request.

And among those documents that are already published, I did not yet find anything useful or interesting.

Lena Schimmel

@uint8_t And I really hope that I did not just spread misinformation. I got that information from haustechnikdialog.de/News/2954

where it says:

"...können nun über eine spezielle EU-Website kostenlose Einsicht in die EN-Normen beantragen. Die Website der EU-Kommission ermöglicht es Ihnen, die benötigten Normen anzufordern. Beachten Sie jedoch, dass der Zugang nur für die europäische Fassung der Normen gilt. Nationale Normen, die nur in deutscher Sprache vorliegen, sind hiervon nicht betroffen."

@uint8_t And I really hope that I did not just spread misinformation. I got that information from haustechnikdialog.de/News/2954

where it says:

"...können nun über eine spezielle EU-Website kostenlose Einsicht in die EN-Normen beantragen. Die Website der EU-Kommission ermöglicht es Ihnen, die benötigten Normen anzufordern. Beachten Sie jedoch, dass der Zugang nur für die europäische Fassung der Normen...

Lena Schimmel

@uint8_t But the page it links to... it does not explicitly say that it applies to standards documents. It looks more like an official, european version of @fragdenstaat or something similar.

I can't even find EN 71-5:2015, the toy safety standard that lead to the court ruling in the first place.

Daniel Fisher(lennybacon)

@lenaschimmel @uint8_t @fragdenstaat It is only a limited set of standards. Nice, but not what we are asking for.

rugk

@lennybacon @lenaschimmel @uint8_t @fragdenstaat well if yiu cannot find it, request it. Yeah but maybe the #FOI page is also used for the #EN norm acesss, aka all documents…

rugk

@lennybacon @lenaschimmel @uint8_t @fragdenstaat Tried requesting something… it is a pain, the login was impossible as somehow they require a 2FA now, but you cannot add a #WebAuthn key (though there is something for "security key", but it does not work). Also needed to reset my password aaand… […]

rugk

@lennybacon @lenaschimmel @uint8_t @fragdenstaat finally tried via #eID which creates a new account (though the text sometimes states different implying you can link it to your existing account) leading to another login failure if you're logged in with your "old" account.
And finally, #eID login works, and I can proceed.
The form is somewhat strange it seems to be made for businesses and orgs, I have to provide an org name etc. I wrote "private person" 😅

rugk

@lennybacon @lenaschimmel @uint8_t @fragdenstaat
And all in all, it ends in the following result: internal server error 😥

@EUCommission

Mister Dave Gets Weird

@lenaschimmel would you mind summarizing or quoting relevant replies in thread? replies don't always federate

Li

@lenaschimmel @uint8_t what the fuck why does ISO still ask for payment to get standards on their website then pffft

Daniel Durrans

@uint8_t @neil are you suggesting that that becomes a standard?

Fish Id Wardrobe

@uint8_t you can hardly claim it's a standard and then keep it secret, and charging thousands of pounds to read it is pretty close to that.

Daniel Appelquist

@uint8_t agreed. This is one reason the Gov UK open Standards Principles gov.uk/government/publications states open standards must be "publicly available and free to use".

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@uint8_t

*Especially* ISO 8601.

There are just too many incompatible half-arsed partial implementations written by people who haven't read the standard because they couldn't be arsed to try to drive their employer's purchase order system which they've otherwise never had any need to touch ...

Jess👾

@uint8_t
Though that also means that creating and maintaining standards needs to be funded by government, industry consortiums, or NGOs. Doing all that work ain't free.

nxadm

@uint8_t

If not freely and easily (== online) available it is NOT a standard. It's just pretending to be one

shironeko
@uint8_t standards should at least be free to redistribute. Free as in free from any restrictions.
Soso

@uint8_t A standard that cannot be implemented freely is not a standard, it's a racket.

Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@uint8_t For me a standard is by very definition something you want to publish out freely so it gets broad adoption, otherwise it's a waste of money.

So I kind of consider the ones which aren't open-access to be mere internal/private specifications, like the kind of stuff from a customer.
Daniel

@uint8_t Can we start with the C++ standard? How its official standardization document is not freely available is wild if you think about it.

Daniel

@uint8_t Let's create a standard for a programming language everyone agrees on.

But also make it 200€ to add a bit of inconvenience and make sure people go to unvetted 3rd party websites instead.

iso.org/standard/83626.html

Gokul Das

@djh @uint8_t In that case, let me introduce to you (or remind you) of IEEE 754! The Floating Point "standard"! 🤦

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8

Cassander

@uint8_t Agreed. If it's not freely available for anyone to review and build against, it's not a standard.

Jari Komppa 🇫🇮

@uint8_t but that would mean people wouldn't come up with new standards

irina 🌷🐇

@sol_hsa @uint8_t if only we had some kind of international organisation for standardisation that gets funded by some kind of intergovernmental body to do this sort of thing

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