ISO/IEC Website and Charging for C and C++ Standards
For what it's worth, Herb Sutter wrote an article touching on this issue, and there's a fair bit of discussion in the comments:
As he mentions, "open" does not necessarily mean "no-cost". As far as students or others with limited financial means who might want free versions of thee documents, note that:
- many references that students may want (or even be required to access) are not free
- for most work, the standards simply aren't a requirement - there is plenty of freely available documentation that is more than adequate for much of the work that almost anyone might want to do with C or C++
- the draft documents are freely downloadable in many cases; while they aren't the standard, the final draft versions are very close and might be good enough for a lot of uses.
If you're serious about C or C++ programming, I'd suggest that you should have a copy of the standards (though I wouldn't say it's a requirement). I'd also suggest that there shouldn't be an expectation that they'd be free, just as for any occupation or avocation the 'tools of the trade' are generally not free - whether those tools are physical objects like hammers, or information such as manuals or specifications.
In fact, I'd argue that a good set of references would be preferable to a set of the standards, if you could only have one or the other or you're starting out (you'd probably want a couple different ones for C++, while Harbison & Steele is all that's needed for C).
Don't get me wrong - I'm not opposed to them being made freely available (and I'm happy that they're currently rather inexpensive), but I don't think there's any reason to expect them to free.
The answers to the SO question, "Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?", have pointers to cheap versions and free draft versions. Also note that the current C99 standard (with TC1 and TC2 incorporated) is available for free download:
There's a note that N1124 "is a WG14 working paper, but it reflects the consolidated standard at the time of issue".
It's unfortunate, but I can see why it is the way that it is.
The standards bodies are required to be self-funding - the idea behind charging for the standards is that those that are benefiting from the standard are then paying for its production. As these standards bodies are intergovernmental organisations (not incorporated companies like The Open Group), they don't have a charter to be in the business of providing certification, so they can't fund it that way.
Does anyone know why the ISO standards committees don't make their revenue in certifying standards compliance, instead of charging for these documents?
This one I can answer: There is no money to make there. Except for EDG, there never was a standard-conforming C++ compiler. And even if they charged for vendors trying (and vendors being stupid enough to have their obviously non-conforming compilers evaluated), besides GCC (who would pay for it?) there's very few vendors to make money from.
Regarding the fee: At least at one point the best deal was to buy the C++03 standard bound as a book.