standards development process

[Mark Purtill]

In article <> henry at utzoo.UUCP writes:
>> Future language standardizations should have more representation by
>> users, and this should be required by ANSI...
>
>How do you propose that they should require this?  Forbid standardization
>without adequate user representation?  In practice this would lead to
>very few standards being written.  There is NO LAW against more users
>getting involved in ANSI standardization work!!  The problem is that
>few of them bother.  

One of the reasons that few people bother is that ANSI charges large
sums of money for copies of the standard; last I heard, it was on the
order of $50.  I think it costs even more to actually join X3J11 (altho 
I'm not sure).  If ANSI would allow net distribution, they probably get
a lot more response.

(Actually, early on someone was sending out free copies of the standard;
I've got one, but its on the order of two years old, and I've been told
X3J11 will ignore comments not based on the latest standard.  It didn't
have such stuff as noalias in it anyway...)

^.-.^ Mark Purtill
((")) purtill at math.mit.edu