European standards bodies are inaccessible to Open Source projects
This really pisses me off. European harmonised standards are effectively <i>legislation</i>. You can't sell a product in the EU without complying with them. Yet they're behind a really expensive pay-wall. If you buy the standard from ISO it's often €150 - and often that's just to find out if you even have to comply.<p>Even working out which standards you should comply with is a nightmare - often they reference each other, so then you have a cascading web of standards compliance which never seems to end. And viewing each standard, even if it's just to see if it matters, costs €150.<p>The standards are often written by businesses in the industry - the authors are on their payroll. ISO isn't even paying these people.<p>Standards should be free and open, or have no legal weight.