Oh, Jean-Luc, you know there are five pineapples. You can see it, oui?

I see what you did there.

Made me mad about saffron, to be honest.

But it is clear that the people that the IEEE does serve are their members only. That's not including me or thousands of other /. readers.

You know that ethernet that you probably use, that /. uses, that everyone else uses? IEEE Std. 802.3. The standard for UNIX? IEEE 1003. SCSI? That's an IEEE standard, too. Standards development isn't cheap; editors cost money. (They gotta eat, too.)

Standards development is just one of the services the IEEE performs for the industry at large. There are others.

Full disclosure: I chair an IEEE standards working group. I personally know people who work for the IEEE standards department. It's likely that little money from the IEEE pubs department goes towards supporting the standards effort at the IEEE; this is merely an example.