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From: jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.internat
Subject: Re: I hate committees
Message-ID: <6732@boring.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Jan-86 11:55:33 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6732
Posted: Sun Jan 19 11:55:33 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jan-86 04:20:52 EST
References: <2390@gatech.CSNET> <1034@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: jack@mcvax.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 33
Keywords: net.internat
Xref: watmath net.news.group:4948 net.internat:146
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax

In article <1034@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>
>While the idea of international standardization is a very good one, I am
>afraid it is very naive to expect a newsgroup by itself to accomplish
>anything.  What is needed is an international committee, containing
>representatives from the principle computer companies in the world.  

Oh, no!!!! Please Please Please let this not be given to a committee.

Committees are great (well, more-or-less) for standardizing things
(like unix, and C), but awful for inventing a standard from scratch
(like X-25, or X-400).

I think that a lot of discussion, like in this newsgroup, together
with serious research is the way to go for the next few years.

A committee will probably come with a solution where every swedish
letter is representable on a printer in Japan, and visa versa,
without giving a single thought to wether the price for this
isn't far too high.

Let's just continue the brain-storming, and install the committee
in a decade or so, and we'll have something nice to live with.

By the way, someone from Unix Europe Ltd. posted a longish article
to the net a couple of months before net.internat started.
I tried to contact him since then, but didn't succeed. If the
poster reads this, or someone has a copy handy, maybe it could
be sent to this group. As I recall, it contained a lot of ideas
about internationalisation of unix (and I disagreed with most of them).
-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP
	The shell is my oyster.