The part about dysfunction in standards committees is salient, if possibly over exaggerated. Thats the down side of bringing together people in different sectors and competitors to try to hammer out a standard. Everyone has their own use cases and agendas, and it is not easy to make everyone happy on the best of days, and when some members push choices that are worse because they will have a competitive advantage it can get really bad.
The open standards issue on the other hand is not a factor. I am all for open standards, but they don’t stop people from making mistakes. In practice the 802.11 family of standards are widely available to anyone who wants them. The cost of official copies is negligible compared to the hardware and personnel costs of carrying on this type of research in a professional or academic environment, and they are easy enough to find online that any curious hobbyist could have easily downloaded a copy for free.
