> the whale we need to go after is IEEE.

I wholeheartedly second this. I'm an individual member and a member of a specific IEEE society that sponsors a specific standard and I still have to pay for a copy. In contrast, the same standard has been adapted for specific industries and there are IEC, ITU and a SMPTE specs adopting it and those I can get for free. Doubly irritating because some of the most crucial standards like the 802 family are all paywalled. And it's not like it's warranted because if I need a standard I'm probably a vendor. Take high-speed Ethernet for example, there is such a proliferation of media types, lane counts, line encodings, FEC options and speed combinations that an engineer needs a reference from the source, and instead it's either third-party information or "stolen" PDFs.

A good chunk of 802 is not paywalled for individuals, notably at least 802.3 and 802.15.4, which I read good chunks of.

The whole world benefits when our infrastructure can stay on spec and those specs are freely available for everyone. Specs are the vaccines holding civilization together.