Thread · 3 tweets · 6 Feb 2019

This thread is entirely correct. It is not systematic but not rare either for entire features in MPEG standards to exist simply to bring in someone's patent. ISO rules prohibit this so those discussions just happen outside the room. I know, I've been there.

The manner in which national bodies vote on ISO standards also hurts. Most countries vote "yes" by default when they don't have time to review a standard, and there are lots of standards. Almost nothing gets rejected. I campaigned to halt a bad ISO standard once, it was hopeless.

That is why, as @fantasai says, the @w3c has a royalty-free policy. It doesn't solve everything but it does remove horse-trading from technical standards and that's huge when you know the alternative.