An online discussion about free standards

This is not very important post but I want to leave a record about a particular discusion regarding free access to standars. Particularly the ISO/IEC ones. I’ll not share the link neither mention this sir I confronted:

Original question:

Is there any way to access and get ISO standards for free like sci-hub for scholar papers?

After a previous comment this sir answers:

ISO and ASTM only exist through sales of their standards. Imagine you had to work for no money. Would you be happy with this?

And me, well, I can’t restrain myself…

Very happy, yes!

He answers me:

So you can feed, house, and clothe your family with no income whatsoever?

and then answers to another participant:

Because it’s theft. In certain parts of the Middle East, theft is dealt with by Sharia law. This is my last statement in this question.

And my final arguments:

Dear XXXX: there is a bunch of successful standard bodies publishing documents without royalties and no-cost. Say just the very well known W3C, OASIS, IETF, IEEE or OMG. I bet they are able to fund themselves.

With ISO the case can be see as outraging since their norms (or the national equivalents) are frequently mandatory by local laws and paying for reading law is absolutely unfair.

BTW is nice to see you mention Sharia law. This says a lot about yourself.

The Sharia comment shocked me o_0

I can recognize some trolling tone from me I probably should moderate. Anyway I strongly believe in the background arguments: legal and industrial standards should be, at least, open access.

An absolutelly inspiring analysis about what an open standard really is the 2005 Ken Krechmer paper Open Standard Requirments. Particularly I found this table amazing:

The open standards matter has interested me from many years to now (my friends can remember that old SOOS obssesion of mine). I should find the time to do some research about standardization and how applies to software and open development communities.