SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Access to Standards & Paywalls

  • Many argue that if the goal of a standards body is interoperability, then the standard documents must be freely accessible; otherwise it looks like access control or moat-building.
  • Others counter that charging is a straightforward way to fund the organization, and that it’s common in industries where paid standards are seen as “serious.”
  • IEEE and various ISO/ANSI standards (C/C++, SQL, Ethernet 802.x, British Standards, construction codes) are cited as frustrating examples of costly or paywalled specs.
  • Workarounds include using public drafts, buying cheaper “national” versions, or outright piracy.

Costs, Funding, and Overhead

  • Standards committees are largely volunteer-driven; the people drafting text generally are not paid and sometimes even self-fund travel and participation.
  • Money from selling standards mainly goes to organizational overhead: admin staff, buildings, meetings, infrastructure, and tax.
  • Some defend fees as modest relative to typical project costs; others say costs accumulate quickly when many standards are needed.

Legal Codes and Public Access

  • Construction and electrical codes remain paywalled, despite being de facto law.
  • Some say this is acceptable since frequent users are professionals for whom the price is minor; others call it a protection racket that locks out homeowners and DIYers.
  • Debate emerges over safety: one side fears free codes plus amateur work will cause harm; the other notes people already DIY dangerously and that access would at least help conscientious users.
  • France and the EU are mentioned as partial counterexamples where legally mandated standards must be freely readable or are licensed for public access.

SMPTE-Specific Notes

  • SMPTE standards cover motion picture and television technologies, from film formats to digital cinema and IP media transport.
  • Commenters welcome SMPTE’s move to make its library free and see it as helping interoperability, especially for codecs and metadata where reverse engineering leads to fragile implementations.
  • SMPTE is also modernizing its process with GitHub-based workflows and HTML authoring; some like the transparency and tooling, others worry about GitHub-specific lock-in but note the core text remains cloneable.