The best technical standards are ones that are actually used.    And which standards are more likely to be used?  How about standards that do the following:

- Proven to work because code exists that actually implements the stands and actually works

- Consists of a collection of tools of which only a few are “must have”

- Free software available to help you implement it

- Utilizes existing, widely available and understood tools

- The specification is freely available

These all lead to practical, working systems that can be quickly implemented. Free code which actually works and does something valuable is an amazingly powerful force.  Such things often become standard without any special governing body approving them.  ie: A defacto standard.   This approach is partly why the Internet is the way it is.

The last point is pretty important.  How many websites would there be if you had to pay thousands of dollars a year for the privilege to know how to create one?

These points are so important to the Internet that all Internet standards are freely available to anyone for download and the vast majority of them have freely available open source implementations.  One of the “founding beliefs” of the Internet Engineering Task Force from David Clark is: “We believe in rough consensus and running code“.