[ANSI-Smalltalk] What do the vendors think?

[Martin McClure]

Bruce Badger wrote:
> 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.

Here's my take, much of which echoes things already said by others.

On ANSI: We're stuck, for better or worse, with ANSI.

* The existing standard is copyrighted by ANSI, and AFAIK there isn't a 
way to remove it from that context. Starting over from scratch is 
impractical on a number of levels, and extending an ANSI standard 
outside of ANSI would be awkward.

* The gravitas of a well-recognized body like ANSI is important. At 
least here, and I suspect at the other vendors as well, it's important 
to us to avoid breaking existing customer code. We don't often risk 
changes to the behavior of our core library. Aside from outright 
breakage, the statement of "Our current behavior contradicts the ANSI 
standard" is one of the few that carries enough weight to get us to 
change long-established behavior. The fact that our customers understand 
who ANSI is, and why they matter, helps. I doubt that our compliance 
with a non-ANSI standard would be as high as our compliance with an ANSI 
standard.


On openness and access:

I favor an open process. I favor universal access. This isn't how ANSI 
is structured. I suggest that there be two groups: One would be the ANSI 
group, using ANSI process, producing an ANSI standard. The other would 
be a Smalltalk Language Issues group (or some such name), sponsored 
perhaps by STIC (or by no existing organization) whose charter is to 
explore Smalltalk protocol options and make recommendations to the ANSI 
group. This process, and the resulting recommendations, would be public.

The ANSI group would either take the recommendations of the Language 
Issues working group, or not. I plan to participate in both groups, 
unless prohibited by ANSI rules. I can't guarantee that when things come 
to a vote in ANSI-land I'll always vote in accordance with the wishes of 
the majority of the Language Issues working group, but I intend to make 
enough comments on issues that I doubt if anyone will be surprised by 
any of my votes.

Regards,

-Martin