Participant maybe, not a representative. Bearing in mind that participation can be broadly defined, and the process is pretty open.
I tend to agree that distribution would be wider with a free version, and would personally prefer seeing the NCS documentation released under the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License). I think we are all aware of derivative versions, from Harvard University to National Parks Service to A/E/C to NavFac. Each group adopting/adapting the systems tailors it to their own requirements, be it large or small. It would be nice to see the forks acknowledging their source and expanding on that relationship.
C3D & NCS -- It's an interesting topic (and I'll note that my employer is not going the NCS route with C3D, not even the partial implementation Adesk rolled out. They elected to roll their own -- opinion on that effort is my own.) Lessee -- lineweights work, grayscales -- not enough in NCS IMHO, Uniform Drawing System sheet & file naming, works reasonably well albeit missing any idea of a profile or cross section sheet. Linetype -- mehh- but Autodesk and the other vendors have such a poor implementation of linetypes that it hardly matters, Layering.... that seems to be the sticker.
I think (and I am not a c3d guru - just poked around the edges to date) that the first problem is that the NCS guys are predominantly coming from the architecture and building systems world, so their grasp of civil drawings is limited. The defined major groups are not necessarily that great a fit for civil work. The AIA is no longer the head organization behind NCS, it's now under the umbrella of the National Institute for Building Science. Again though, bricks, mortar, and MEP - not asphalt and storm drainage areas.
The second problem, and I'm not sure about this one, is that the NCS tends to look at things more from a `builders' point of view as they break things down. the C3d "corridor" really isn't a thing that a contractor builds - it's a design tool for designers to design with. So there's a break there? Is the c3d approach to modeling an effective way to communicate construction information, or is there a better methodology? I dunno.... I've read several rants over the years about the parcels being horribly borked, and find the collaborative/data sharing techniques to be .... not well thought out.
The third thing is that civil drawings tend to be hellishly complex. The civil drawings I do are invariably more cluttered than any other discipline I deal with - much more so than the plant or building drawings, with a lot more going on. And a lot of the information on the drawings is only marginally relevant to the construction stage that the drawing is supposed to communicate. We show overhead electrical on sidewalk plans, but does it really matter where the wires go?
And to repeat myself, the process is pretty much open to whomever wants to participate.