The posted link took me straight to Tim's tweet, so I didn't realize at first that he was replying to @isostandards:<p>> Hello, unfortunately, the ISO Central Secretariat does not provide free copies of standards. All ISO Publications derive from the work and contributions of ISO and ISO Members that contain intellectual property of demonstrable economic value.<p>> For this reason, considering the value of standards, their economic and social importance, the costs of their development and maintenance, we and all ISO Members have the interest to protect the value of ISO Publications and National Adoptions, not making them publicly available.<p>The ISO standard that I have the most experience with is ISO/IEC 9899:1990, aka C90. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that I had a used copy of Herbert Schildt's <i>Annotated ANSI C Standard</i>; it's also a considerably smaller standard than, say, SQL or C++.<p>I'm of mixed minds as to the value of the C standard. There is certainly value in having <i>a</i> standard. After sufficient study and deliberation, you can usually determine whether an input program or compiler implementation is standards conforming. When I compare the evolution of C and C++ to say, Python and Rust, I have trouble pointing to the specific value that ISO adds.<p>This isn't really a fair comparison, because the difference between C/C++ and Python/Rust isn't just the process, but the end result. I judge C and C++ not just by ISO's efforts, but by those of Microsoft, IBM, GNU, LLVM, etc. Python and Rust, meanwhile, ship a working reference implementation, and do a pretty good job of it. Rust has improved quite a bit six weeks at a time. C standards, meanwhile, ship closer to every decade. Even the new rapid pace of C++ is every three years.