standards development process

[Wayne A. Throop]

> dsill at NSWC-OAS.arpa (Dave Sill)
>> (Henry Spencer)
>>There is NO LAW against more users getting involved in ANSI
>>standardization work!!  The problem is that few of them bother.
> It's not that they don't bother.  Compiler-marketing companies
> obviously have more at stake in the standardization than the typical
> company that uses their compilers.  Hence, they are more willing to
> support an employee on a standards committee.

Dave's position doesn't make sense to me.  Don't companies that *use*
those compilers have a stake in the future portability of their code,
and thus have a very convincing motive to support employees on the
standards comittee?

The psychology of such consumer-oriented participation (or rather: lack
thereof) seems to me to be based on the "We'll live with whatever the
comittee comes up with." fallacy.  This fallacy seems to fit neatly into
the category of "not bothering".

(And by the way, many compiler-vendor representatives have much more
 reason to be conservative about feeping creaturism than do compiler
 users.  After all, they have to spend money to develop the feeping
 creatures that folks come up with.)

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Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw