There is a middle ground between hobbyist and large stakeholders that ends in the worst spot.
As you point out those are legal requirements, and a small/middle size company would need to know them before entering a field or hitting some legally bound clients. The paying upfront makes it difficult to do pure discovery to even know how hard are the requirements to implement.
I saw that at a small company where we could have been interested in applying for a standard, as a nice to have to bring more business. But the cost of paying for the doc, go through it to then perhaps realize it’s not worth it, brought enough friction that it was delayed to oblivion.
Yup. Monetization of things that ought to be free and standardized is one of the biggest unnecessary drags on productivity growth today. That many non-profit bodies contribute to it just makes it more sad. Large companies don’t care about this relatively small cost, and they actually benefit from the (small) moat that monetization creates.
As you point out those are legal requirements, and a small/middle size company would need to know them before entering a field or hitting some legally bound clients. The paying upfront makes it difficult to do pure discovery to even know how hard are the requirements to implement.
I saw that at a small company where we could have been interested in applying for a standard, as a nice to have to bring more business. But the cost of paying for the doc, go through it to then perhaps realize it’s not worth it, brought enough friction that it was delayed to oblivion.