standards development process

[Frank Adams]

In article <7666 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>Now, hold on.  If someone doesn't care enough to get involved, why
>should any attention be paid to their desires?

The following is an oversimplification, but I think it is basically accurate.

There are perhaps 100 organizations involved in writing C compilers.  Each
of these has considerable interest in the standard -- let us say 100 units
worth.  This gives us a total of 10,000 units of interest by compiler
development organizations.

There are perhaps 10,000 organizations using C compilers.  Each of these has
much less interest in the standard than the individual compiler writers --
let us say 10 units worth.  This still adds up to a total of 100,000 units
of interest by users -- ten times as much as the compiler folks.

But, it costs the equivalent of maybe 20 units of interest for an
organization to involve itself in the process.  So the applications
developers don't bother, and the process is dominated by the compiler
writers.

A further complication is that many of the larger applications development
organizations, who might indeed find it worthwhile to send a representative
from the applications side, are also compiler vendors; and the rules only
allow one representative per organization.

I don't have any answers here.  But there is a very real problem.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108