Committee: Yes, with reservations

[Alan Bawden <ALAN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>]

Well, I've thought about this CL Committee thing for a couple of days now,
and here are my thoughts.  

Like many people, I'm apprehensive about over-committing myself so that I
never get around to the really interesting things I want to do.  The
commitments that extract the most are the ones that steal just a little
time, but on an extremely reqular basis.  Unstructured mailing list debates
are big offenders of this kind.  This is one reason why I stopped
participating in Common Lisp discussions.

Common Lisp is not a language that it is possible to get passionate about.
It's an ugly language, scarred by the politics that formed it.  No one
advocates Common Lisp as more than an adaquate tool.  This makes it hard to
summon up enthusiasm for the task of fixing and clarifying its definition.
It makes it easy to get impatient with someone who dumps the same technical
and political issues behind some Common Lisp wart in my lap for the
seventeenth time.

    Date: 11 Mar 86  1256 PST
    From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
    ...  I believe that things will be more rational and smooth than the old
    way, but I could be wrong....

If, under this new committee scheme, decisions can be made more efficiently
and less painfully, then I am willing to participate.  Unfortunately there
is no way to find out what it will be like without trying it.  If I accept,
I can't really guarantee that I will be able to contribute as fully as
everyone might wish.  

So yes, I'm agreeing to be on the committee, as long as it is clear that I
have reservations about my ability to fulfill the requirements.  I will
guarantee to give it a good try.