Because ISO likes free money. In most cases ISO doesn't pay the authors and reviewers of standards, so instead of posting the document for free, it gets to indefinitely receive 100% of the profit from the work. It's a sweet deal for ISO, and a terrible deal for the rest of the world. ISO's paywall makes it very difficult to <i>apply</i> their standards. It's essentially an anti-standardization stance, not what you'd expect from a standards body. It's especially a problem because today's complex systems depend on millions of agreements that need to be standardized (not necessarily by ISO).<p>More generally: If a publisher charges money for a document, you should ask if the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a royalty on the profit. If the authors (or their employers) are getting paid a (decent) royalty, then that's a decent justification for the charge. If the authors/employers are not getting paid, then that looks suspiciously like an exploitative relationship. ISO is in the latter camp. Que bene?<p>I'll use ISO standards, and if my employer pays me I'll participate in an ISO process. But I strongly prefer working with standards organizations who have changed their processes to fit the 21st century. Today many people's expectation is that a standards body will make the standards freely available, since there's no excuse to do otherwise. ISO fails that test, and instead has a big paywall. The historical justification was to support a printing press, but that is completely unnecessary today (just post the PDF or HTML, that's all we need!). ISO <i>will</i> occasionally release standards freely (e.g., the Ada language specification and the Common Criteria were ISO standards that ISO <i>agreed</i> would be freely available even on initial ratification). But you have to work for it. Other standards-setting bodies, like the IETF, are typically wiser choices for developing standards.<p>I hope that someday ISO will change their policies. But as long as they're getting lots of free money, based primarily on work by people they don't pay, it's not clear why they would change.