Congress already funds the development of the standards, these bodies just continue to profit from them until they are superseded, entirely due to these practices.
This is very much like public funded research, it's funded by taxpayers but not available to them without movements like SciHub liberating the products of said research.
It's a bit of a joke that it's allowed to continue this way for so long in the first place.
So EL does some research that UL/ASTM/etc. rely on to develop their standards, and therefore those standards should all be free? By that logic, Google's search algorithms should be made public because it almost certainly relies on some publicly-funded CS research.
If lawmakers required all search engines to use google's algorithm then I say yes. Otherwise to comply with the law you would be required to pay google to give you access to the algorithm.
But then isn't the public funding angle totally irrelevant? Or are you saying that under your hypothetical, where lawmakers required search engines to use Google's algorithm, whether the algorithm should be open depends on whether Google relied on any publicly funded research in developing it? I think the answer is "no"--incorporating it into the law is what justifies requiring it to be open, not the fact it relied on publicly-funded research.
The post I responded to stated:
> Congress already funds the development of the standards, these bodies just continue to profit from them until they are superseded, entirely due to these practices.
Basically, the original poster accused standards organizations of double dipping. I asked for proof, and all I got was a link to an NIST article stating that standards organizations used some of its research in formulating standards. My point is that everybody relies on government research--that doesn't mean the standards were "funded by Congress" in the first place.
I'm being pedantic here, but I think it's important to call out. It's very common in HN for posters to insert random snipes like this without any factual backing, and for people to take such assertions at face value.
Governments delegate rule-making authority, which have the force of law, to these industry organizations. If all laws should be public, these too should be public, regardless of funding model.
This is very much like public funded research, it's funded by taxpayers but not available to them without movements like SciHub liberating the products of said research.
It's a bit of a joke that it's allowed to continue this way for so long in the first place.