Proposed Message regarding X3J13 Membership

[Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>]

    Date: 09 Mar 86  1713 PST
    From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>


    Below is a proposed message announcing the committee memberships,
    progress, and what to do next. Please comment and/or amend this.
    Once we all agree, we should mail it out.

    Subject: Members of the Common Lisp Committee

    At the December Common Lisp meeting Bob Mathis, Scott Fahlman, Guy Steele,
    Dan Weinreb, Dave Moon, and Dick Gabriel were charged with the duty of
    nominating a technical committee and a steering committee for the purpose
    of defining an ISO Lisp.  This message is to report on the membership of
    those committees, to describe the actions we have taken towards making
    those committees official, and to outline the next steps we need to take.

Were we charged with "nominating" or "appointing"?  If the former, then
presumably there is some ratification step before we can claim that the
committee *is* as stated below.

    First, we have decided not to create the committee under DARPA
    sponsorship, but to operate within the ANSI framework, setting up a
    committee for Common Lisp under X3 tentatively known as X3J13.  
								    X3J13 will
    have international members, but we have not asked anyone outside the US to
    join as yet, though we intend to invite some number.

Say rather: "ANSI committees are permitted to have members from other
countries.  We have not asked anyone outside the US to join as yet, but
we intend to invite some number for the benefit of international
experience and cooperation."

By the way, I spoke to Ida last week (he was in Cambridge), and he
expressed interest in serving on an ANSI committee.  Electronic mail
to him is supposed to be improving.

    There are two committess of importance, the steering committee and the
    technical committee.  The steering committee is charged with guiding the
    results of the technical committee through the standarization process,
    particularly at the ISO level. The technical committee decides the the
    language specification and develops a document specifying Common Lisp.

"the the"?  [typo]  Clarify whether or not the ISO level comes strictly after
ANSI acceptance, and indicate that status as an ANSI standard is a separate
and possibly independent goal.

    The American members of the steering committee are:

    Bob Mathis, Private Consultant 
    Steve Squires, DARPA 
    Ron Ohlander, USC-ISI
    John McCarthy, Stanford University 
    Guy Steele Jr, Thinking Machines 
    Dick Gabriel, Lucid

Be formal: give full people and company names.

    The American members of the technical committee were chosen according to
    several criteria:

    (1) The member must have a deep knowledge of Lisp and its implementation,
    with experience in at least one serious Lisp implementation.

    (2) The member must be a well-recognized, prominent individual.  He or she
    must be someone whose reputation is recognized internationally.

    (3) The member must represent an important segment of the current Lisp
    community.

Well, I guess that last one disqualifies me, unless I represent users.

Who's representing the theoreticians?  (How about Mitch Wand?  But don't
take this too seriously.)

    We recognize, though, that many important people have been left off of the
    committee. In particular, not all implementation efforts are represented.
    In order to recognize the contribution to Common Lisp that these efforts
    have made by supporting Common Lisp and to ensure that the experience of
    these efforts is not lost, we will ask each implementation group to
    designate an individual to whom all technical decisions must be presented
    before decisions are made.

This is an empty gesture unless there is some provision for feedback
from said individual.  Why not just say that discussions will be held
mainly over the net, and that there will be an opportunity for comments
from the LISP community before decisions are made final?

    Although these technical liasons will not officially vote on the technical
    committee, the technical committee will consider the votes of these
    individuals carefully when making decisions. One of the first tasks of the
    technical committee will be to set up a set of procedures for making
    decisions and accepting comments and proposals from the Common Lisp
    community. Until then we can only state that a close working relationship
    with the Common Lisp community and with the implementation groups in
    particular is one of our main goals.

    The American members of the technical committee are:

    Alan Bawden, MIT
    Dan Bobrow, Xerox
    Scott Fahlman, CMU (Chairman of the Technical Committee)
    Dick Gabriel, Lucid
    Dave Moon, Symbolics
    Jonathon Rees, MIT
    Guy Steele, Thinking Machines

Add Griss.  I have no objection to having an even number of committee
members; we can simply require a 5-3 vote to make any change.  I'm not
sure I would want anything important to hinge on a 5-4 vote anyway.
(Which reminds me of the standard legal conundrum:  what should happen
if Congress passes a law that henceforth requires a 6-3 vote of the
Supreme Court to declare any law unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court
subsequently declares it unconstitutional by a vote of 5-4?)

    At this point a document has been submitted to the Standards Planning and
    Requirements Committee of X3, known as SPARC, proposing the formation of
    the X3J13 committee.  SPARC is the committee which must approve the
    formation of any new technical committees. The document outlines the need
    for such a committee, the scope of the standard, the potential members of
    the committee, and the plan and schedule for accomplishing the standard.

    I hope that the standarization work informally started in the Lisp community
    will continue to fruition at the international level.

"I" => "We"?
				    Dick Gabriel
				    Scott Fahlman
				    Dave Moon
				    Dan Weinreb
				    Guy Steele
				    Bob Mathis

Alphabetize this list?

--Guy