Technical decide how a plug fits, how a message is and how a container is stacked.
They are written in committees that almost nobody watches and have consequences that everybody lives with.
A standard is not a neutral description of the best available method.
It is a between firms with existing products and , reached at a particular moment.
Once adopted, it becomes extremely difficult to change, because every product built to it would have to be replaced.
Participation is open in principle and expensive in practice.
Attending four meetings a year on three continents with a technical staff is affordable to a large firm and to almost nobody else.
The resulting documents therefore encode the assumptions of the organisations that could afford to be in the room.
Patents inside a standard are the mechanism through which this becomes revenue.
A holder commits to on fair and reasonable terms, and the meaning of those words has occupied courts for two decades.
The fee is small per unit and enormous in , and it is paid by every manufacturer that wants to .
Standard-setting is therefore industrial policy conducted by private bodies, which is why states have begun to attend.
Several governments now fund and coordinate positions in advance.
That has made the process more visible and not obviously more open.
Developing countries face the original difficulty in a sharper form.
A standard written for a grid that is reliable, or for a road network that is maintained, imposes costs where neither assumption holds.
Adopting it is expensive and refusing it excludes a country's manufacturers from an export market.
The choice is therefore between two costs, and it is usually presented as a choice about quality.