Membership

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

In my view, Griss's imitation of Hamlet has gone on long enough.  If he's
this ambivalalent about joining the committee, he shouldn't be on it.  I
think we should contact him on Monday and ask for a clear answer one way
or the other.  We told him a week ago that we couldn't wait much longer.

If he doesn't join, that leaves us with Gabriel, Moon, Steele, Fahlman,
Rees, and Boborow.  Let me propose that we add Bawden and Foderaro.
Yes, that makes eight, but I doubt that we'll have many deadlocked votes.

The choice of Bawden is obvious: it gives us one more reasonable member
whom we all respect.  I don't think that people will complain about
there being two MIT people; it's not the same problem that you get when
one company seems to be packing the committee.

The choice of Foderaro is less clear, but the more I think about it, the
more I think it is a good move.  The main reason is that the Franz
community (not just the company) is a substantial constituency whom we
have made little effort to court in the past.  I don't want all those
people to feel discriminated against, and the way to avoid that is to
take one of their people aboard the technical committee.  Foderaro is
the one they want and, happily, also the least objectionable to us.
(I'd have a real problem with Fateman, just because his debating style
is really obnoxious.)  I think we're going to have enough political
problems with the Europeans, without needlessly creating a bunch of
enemies at home.  Foderaro will probably be very quiet, but if he turns
out to be full of bad ideas, we listen politely and then outvote him.  I
don't think he'll disrupt the decision process in any way.

There is the question of whether we can afford to buckle under to direct
lobbying of the sort that the Franz people have been doing.  I think
that we can make the case that we are taking Foderaro not because his
company asked us to, but because Franz is a popular dialect and he is
one of the key implementors.  His name DID come up in our discussions
before the lobbying began.  So we're still not letting each company have
a seat, which would be impossible in any event, but we are trying to
gather people and expertise from many of the major branches of Lispery:
Zetalisp, Scheme, Interlisp, Franz, and maybe (if Chailloux wants to
play) EuLisp.

I believe that RPG is not in favor of including Foderaro; I'd be
interested in hearing from the rest of you.

-- Scott