[ANSI-Smalltalk] Response to the first draft of our project application

[Ralph Johnson]

On Dec 17, 2007 9:48 AM, Bruce Badger <bwbadger at gmail.com> wrote:

> What does not appear to be so good is the INCITS response to the
> questions about accessibility of the standard text and openness of the
> standard process.  See below,
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------

> Just a couple of quick points regarding policy and procedures:
>
> 1) INCITS does not permit the use of wiki.
>
> 2) Our office will maintain the document repository for the group, the
> reflector, and the mailing list.
>
> 3) This draft standard is copyright by our office.

Yes, this is discouraging.  It is enough to make me think that perhaps
we should consider working with another group.  I bet that they will
only put people on the mailing list who are INCITS members, i.e. who
pay the fee.

However, I have a possible workaround.  We keep the wiki.  We keep our
own mailing list.  We are obviously just a bunch of Smalltalkers who
are discussing how to improve the ANSI standard.  A few of us are
INCITES members.  We don't have a draft of the standard on our wiki,
though we have versions of various parts of it.  Periodically, INCITES
members take the result of our work and use it to make changes to the
official standard.

This has the advantage that we can just focus on figuring out what the
Smalltalk standard should be.  The INCITES members worry about the
bureaucracy and how to format the standard document.  It has the
disadvantage of making us play a game.

-Ralph