> these standards explicitly prohibited their use in implementing any open source implementation of the standards

Is that legally enforceable? IANAL, but that feels dubious to me. Feels like there should be a way around that.

This even extends to how some standards are written: deliberately complex and poor work just to make it frustrating and ensure a high barrier of entry. And of course there are either no test suites or testing against them costs a fortune.

This is the kind of thing politicians in a reasonable world would make illegal and subject to sanctions.