Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!sappho!cdsm
From: cdsm@sappho.doc.ic.ac.uk (Chris Moss)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: More fun with WG17
Message-ID: <1355@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 14 Nov 89 12:37:39 GMT
References: <2609@munnari.oz.au> <696@sce.carleton.ca> <2643@munnari.oz.au> <1354@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> <2688@munnari.oz.au>
Sender: news@doc.ic.ac.uk
Reply-To: cdsm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Chris Moss)
Organization: Logic Group, Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK.
Lines: 51

In article <2688@munnari.oz.au> ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes:
>I cannot agree that the setting up of WG17 was "a totally democratic
>process".  To check my understanding of this, I actually went out and
>bought a new dictionary (the Collins COBUILD, Aus$20, ISBN 0-00-370023-2).
>
>democratic 2
>	Something that is democratic is based on the idea that everyone
>	should have equal rights and should be involved in making
>	important decisions.

Ah but you haven't quoted the first definition:

democratic 1
    A country, government, or political system that is democratic has
    representatives who are elected by the people.

This is closer to what we are talking about and I have to agree WG17 is
NOT totally democratic, except in a roundabout way. Our democratic (?)
countries decided to participate in ISO and mandated the appropriate
bodies to take the decisions for them. Indeed I criticized WG17 for
being somewhat cavalier with the representative nature of the exercise.

>Now in what sense did "New Zealand" (for example) _choose_ not to be
>active in the Prolog standard?  Well, Chris Moss informs us that
>> NZ is a member of ISO, but is NOT a member
>> of JTC1 or SC22 and therefore does not vote on this.
>This is the procedure he says is "totally democratic".

But, Richard, one of the principles dear to the hearts of Western
democracies is the right of anyone NOT to participate if they don't want
to. (Do we approve of compulsory voting?) NZ CHOSE not to participate.

>I repeat, I myself don't think it's a bad thing for a standards body
>to be non-democratic.  

Forget the above argument. It's obviously irrelevant! (:-)

>(We may not have a Guy Steele to write the book; would a Richard O'Keefe do?

As far as I'm concerned, yes. In 1984 I hoped we might get a better
language than what you call "Common Prolog". Now I'm older and have
fewer illusions.

But I'm not sure it would solve the problems while there is an ISO
committee with a different agenda. Look at LISP. Now it's gone into the
standards game all the old arguments (Scheme, core versions etc.) have
got their supporters. I'm not up to date on the current state of battle
(Can anyone comment?) but I doubt they'll get any agreement for Common
Lisp.

Chris Moss.