Membership

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

OK, Weinreb and Gabriel have persuaded me that it would be a mistake to
re-open the membership decision process in response to pressure of this
kind.  So for now I am content to make no changes in the committee and
see what happens; if serious guerilla warfare starts, we may still want
to surrender rather than fight, but with luck we can just let the whole
thing fade away.  So I switch my vote to 2, reserving the right to
chicken out later if the going gets tough.

The "good luck" at the end of Fateman's last message sounded sarcastic
and bitter, but also like he wasn't planning to pursue this further.
Kunze has probably played all his cards, unless he wants to start a REAL
fight with lawyers and stuff, which I doubt.  He may continue to harass
some of us (the powerful ones, in his view) over the phone, but we've
sketched out a reasonable response to the points he raised with Squires,
I think.

I just saw Bob Mathis's note on all this.  I agree that we should think
about face-saving gestures, but I don't favor either a formal panel of
company representatives or Bob's plan to sneak Foderaro onto the
committee in some sort of second-class way.  The latter would just
enrage these guys further, I think, just when they seem to be about to
let it drop.

Let me suggest that we take two steps that might make everyone not on
the committee feel better.  First, we should stop using company
identifications when talking about the technical and steering committee
members.  These people were chosen as individuals, not as
representatives of their companies.  We should agree among ourselves
that this membeship will not be used in advertising by our respective
companies.  It is OK for companies to say that such and so a person is
"one of the original designers of the Common Lisp language", or words to
that effect.

Second, we should take a poll, on the Clisp mailing list, of all the
companies that are "participating" (or that have people participating)
in the Common Lisp design discussions.  The prestense for this could be
to gather a list of contact people and their addresses for formal X3J13
announcements, or whatever.  The real reason for doing this is that when
the poll has been completed, we send out a long list that says "People
from the following companies are currently participating in the Common
Lisp design process..." and then they have their name on the official
list and a bullet for their brochures if that's what they are really
after.  But it doesn't create a new class of people who think that they
get to vote on things.

-- Scott