standards development process

[Dave Sill]

> Wayne 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?

Yes, of course they have a motive.  They just don't have as strong a
motive.

Let's look at the vendor side.   The success of, say, Lattice's C
compiler probably has a direct influence on every employee of the
company.  Even Microsoft, with hundreds of other products, would feel
the pinch if their C compiler sales dropped significantly.  The PC
compiler market is very competitive; and the vendors have much at
stake and much to gain by being able to claim that their compiler is
the best.  They want things like `volatile' and `noalias' so they can
write mega-optimizing compilers to enter in The Big Benchmark Contest.

Now let's look at the user side.  The typical company (excluding C
compiler vendors, of course) has a much smaller stake in the compiler
wars.  They aren't going to have to lay off 50% of their employees
because they can't buy a C compiler that handles `volatile'.  Even the
`support the standard for portability reasons' argument doesn't hold
water: a standard will be created whether Company X supports a
committee member or not.

>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".

To an extent, this is true.  As I pointed out above, they just don't
have enough reason to support a committee position.

>(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.)

Yeah, right.  Just like automakers curse air-conditioning, FM radios,
power steering, et cetera.  A product is the sum of its features.

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The opinions expressed above are mine.

"Faith is believing what you know ain't true."
					-- Anonymous