[ANSI-Smalltalk] What do the vendors think?

[Eric Clayberg]

Bruce,

>I would be particularly interested to hear the views of the Smalltalk
>vendor companies about how they feel about ANSI/INCITS, open process
>and all that.
>
>I wonder if the gravitas that would come with working with ANSI (or
>perhaps another standards body) is important to them, and if they
>think it may be important to their customers or potential customers.

I don't see how it would be possible to build on the existing 
standard and not work with ANSI at some level. The final standard 
would need to be ANSI in order to use any portion of the existing 
1998 standard. Any copying of the existing standard or attempt to 
represent it in another form (unless it uses completely different 
words) would be a violation of the ANSI copyright.

Sure, we could start with the known interfaces from the 1998 standard 
and re-document them all, but keep in mind that we are talking about 
a 300pp, 82,000 word document that took thousands of hours to prepare 
the first time (many of those hours paid for by IBM, PPD, Gemstone, etc.).

I can't even conceive of *not* starting with the 1998 standard. In 
fact, I would go so far as to say that unless you start with the 
exiting standard, this entire effort is doomed from the beginning. I 
doubt very much that any of us has the time or energy to recreate the 
entire 1998 effort and then carry it forward. I also doubt very much 
that the main Smalltalk vendors (ourselves included) have the 
resources to start this from scratch either.

Several people who worked on the first standard worked for me (at PPD 
and at Instantiations), and I remember very clearly what a massive 
investment in time it was to create the first time. This time around, 
we are prepared to allocate some of our time (primarily John's) to 
carrying the standard forward, but we don't have the time to start over.

As to the issue of process (open vs. closed). I can imagine several 
hybrid solutions that ultimately result in a new ANSI standard. Even 
the first standard benefited from a lot of people who weren't 
official ANSI committee members (see page iv of the draft standard). 
You can have an "official" ANSI committee and closed mailing list for 
official ANSI business and an open process for community contribution 
to a new standard (open mailing list, wiki, etc.). Officially, the 
ANSI committee would decide what goes in or not; unofficially, that 
committee can agree to abide by the wishes of the greater community.

The issue of gravitas is also important. If the end result isn't an 
ANSI standard that builds upon the first one, will any of our 
customers even care given that there *is* an ANSI standard. IOW, will 
we end up with two different, competing standards?

Regards,

-Eric Clayberg
  Sr. Vice President of Product Development
  Instantiations, Inc.
  mailto:vast at instantiations.com
  http://www.instantiations.com/vast