Are there any blindingly obvious examples of instances where
     a) a standards group produced a standard published by a body which 
charged for access to it
and
    b) a alternative standards groups produced a competing standard that 
was openly accessible
and the work of group a) was rendered totally irrelevant because most 
non-commercial work ignored it in favour of b).

My instinct is to quote the battle between OSI (ISO) and TCP/IP (IETF 
RFCs).  Does that strike others as appropriate?

Any examples closer to the library world?

Walter Lewis