Free Software Magazine: Secret Standards

“Is it an oxymoron, or just moronic?

“In the free-wheeling world of free software, we are accustomed
to free standards, published freely, defined by freely
distributable (if not necessarily freely-modifiable) standards
documents. So the idea that an industry group should get together
behind closed doors, come up with a data interchange standard and
then bury it by copyrighting the specification for that standard,
making it available only from a single source, and charging
outrageously high prices for the right to read it seems utterly mad
to us…!”

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