From: Aron Insinga <aki@insinga.com>
To: James Johnston <audioskeptic@gmail.com>,
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind@gmail.com>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 15:47:14 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6c0ad86d-7b8e-4d9e-8937-d85563de0804@insinga.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAO2qRdM3-W2AbBK88rpJjzCgc15BC8efuvkkqN92+ywvbCcc6w@mail.gmail.com>
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It's an issue of where the people who want a standard think they will
have the support to create a standard using a process they are
comfortable with. Yes, the standards for many languages, not to mention
the original ASCII character set, were developed under ANSI. But look
at JavaScript I mean ECMAScript done under the auspices of ECMA. Sun
started to create a Java standard under ISO/IEC but changed their mind
and switched to their own Java Community Process. The National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (formerly the National
Bureau of Standards) publishes standards for some things of interest to
the US Government -- Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).
In most cases the work is done by volunteers, often with the support of
their employers if they aren't an independent consultant or whatever.
The accrediting organization provides the process and some
administrative overhead. I don't know about now, but ANSI sold copies
of their standards to help support themselves.
And standards are used as competitive weapons by companies. If Company
A convinces the committee that their language features are better than
company B's, and A's are written into the standard, then A is
standard-compliant (with respect to those features) from the get-go,
while B will have some work to do which may affect their customer base.
Generally, I believe that people want to get a standard which will give
them a programming language (& library) that they want to use, so there
is a common goal in sight. Traditionally standards were adopted from
existing practice, and sometimes this can mean that the process is
relatively quick. (I think the original COBOL standard was taken from a
manufacturer's language reference manual by Grace Hopper. ISOLatin-1 was
a small change to the DEC Multinational Character Set.) Sometimes a
committee starts reinventing things and it can take a while. Whether or
not it actually finds users depends on how well the committee did their
job, and what the vendors and their customers decide. (Dare I mention
BASIC?)
Remember that standards also cover many other things like the SAE
standards for bolts.
- Aron (a member of X3J16 [C++] for 2 years)
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 12:22 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> Good morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the
> rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the
> publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards. C was
> published via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was
> instead published by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Was there
> every any consideration of C through IEEE or POSIX through
> ANSI instead? Is there an appreciable difference suggested by
> the difference in publishers? In any case, both saw
> subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to an
> international standard seems to lead to the same organizations.
>
> - Matt G.
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-06-26 19:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-06-26 17:56 [TUHS] " segaloco via TUHS
2024-06-26 18:32 ` [TUHS] " Ori Idan
2024-06-26 18:42 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-06-26 20:07 ` Aron Insinga
2024-06-26 23:28 ` Peter Yardley
2024-06-26 18:35 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-06-26 18:43 ` James Johnston
2024-06-26 18:52 ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-06-26 19:34 ` Heinz Lycklama
2024-06-26 20:01 ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2024-06-27 2:36 ` [TUHS] Re: arithmetic, " John Levine
2024-06-27 3:41 ` Charles H. Sauer
2024-06-26 20:29 ` [TUHS] " Marc Rochkind
2024-06-26 21:17 ` Rich Salz
2024-06-26 21:20 ` Alan Coopersmith via TUHS
2024-06-26 21:28 ` Warner Losh
2024-06-26 21:49 ` Rich Salz
2024-06-26 21:53 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2024-06-27 0:44 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 1:11 ` [TUHS] Origin of the name POSIX (was: ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2024-06-27 2:12 ` [TUHS] " Ron Natalie
2024-06-27 2:37 ` Warner Losh
2024-06-27 14:19 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
[not found] ` <CAC20D2M+75ohjTPcTBmBkejeaWjQQjWCkf=4ZYrP4Bk0MCamKA@mail.gmail.com>
2024-06-27 3:02 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 3:03 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 3:08 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 8:20 ` Eric E. Bowles via TUHS
2024-06-27 11:56 ` John S Quarterman
[not found] ` <CAEoi9W4ZSVCVsJJ8pdBuBobeeXOkwsey0kM6DWBnPiuSd_7TQA@mail.gmail.com>
[not found] ` <CANCZdfoghuf4n=HDgRJXDJ5VqZ=rCtmq_0WadaR6kj8QmcoVQQ@mail.gmail.com>
2024-06-27 13:42 ` John S Quarterman
2024-06-27 11:58 ` Dan Cross
2024-06-27 14:34 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 15:05 ` [TUHS] Re: Origin of the name POSIX Heinz Lycklama
2024-06-27 13:57 ` [TUHS] Re: ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection Steffen Nurpmeso
2024-06-27 14:22 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-06-27 14:29 ` Andy Kosela
2024-06-27 14:59 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-27 4:12 ` Wesley Parish
2024-06-27 4:52 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-06-26 19:47 ` Aron Insinga [this message]
2024-06-27 5:02 ` Nevin Liber
2024-06-26 20:36 ` Stuff Received
2024-06-26 22:33 ` James Johnston
2024-06-26 20:32 ` Clem Cole
2024-06-26 22:04 ` Heinz Lycklama
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