--- Paolo Amoroso <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Matthew Astley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > http://clrfi.alu.org/ > > > > I probably won't look at it until I catch up a bit, but it > > sounds like a gardening sort of project and I think there > > is some membership > > If I recall correctly from past discussions in comp.lang.lisp, > one of the major stumbling blocks was the concern that some > marginal Lisp vendor, being left out from a standardization > process, might create legal problems. I still don't understand how this could happen. Could you provide a link to the comp.lang.lisp discussion? Unless (MAYBE) the standardization process were to attempt something like updating or creating a new "official" standard through ISO or ANSI or some such, a standard is nothing more than another descriptive document and it's up to any given implementer whether they want to pay any attention to it. Now if an unofficial standard gets created without consulting a vendor and becomes a de-facto standard I can see how they might be annoyed, but ultimately they're free to ignore it and go their own way, if they want to accept the risk of not supporting something other people want. And I don't see why they couldn't make their suggestions and if they have sufficient merit the standard can issue a new update. Even most ANSI standards are updated over time, so that you need to refer to being compliant to a particular C standard, for example. If "Community Lisp 1.0" is not to a vendor's liking, they can suggest changes for a "Community Lisp 1.1" update. If they have technical merit, are appropriate to standardize, and aren't legally encumbered, I'm sure they would be incorporated. If the standard is really Free in the GNU sense they can even fork the standard, if they're really convinced they have a better idea that people don't accept, and prove that it is in fact a good idea. It's what the community decides to follow that matters in the end, and I have a VERY hard time believeing that a vendor could be able to legally compel their own presence in a non-official and non-binding volunteer process, in the unlikely event the community wanted to exclude them (why??). I would appreciate knowing more about what the original problems were in the ANSI discussions, and if the "official" nature of that effort somehow changed the playing field. Cheers, CY __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
