[plt-scheme] The R6RS board should be commended for their voting process, we all should vote!

From: Grant Rettke (grettke at acm.org)
Date: Thu Jun 14 12:11:25 EDT 2007

Before learning Scheme I'd never thought much about standards
committees. The languages I use at work are owned by a single company,
usually without standards (Java, .NET (C# is an ECMA standard if that
counts). The R6RS folks have been encouraging folks to register to
vote, and that it would only pass if the majority of the community
endorsed it. That sounded pretty neat to me, but I don't think that I
appreciated why that is important.

Yesterday I read an article:

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/hopl-almost-final.pdf

that talked about the volution of C++. There was an interesting passage:

"For the C++ community, the ISO standards process is central: The C++
community has no other formal center, no other forum for driving
language evolution, no other organization that cares for the language
itself and for the community as a whole. C++ has no owner corporation
that determines a path for the language, finances its development, and
provides marketing. Therefore, the C++ standards committee became the
place where language and standard library evolution is seriously
considered." -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Perhaps it is obvious that this is too the case with Scheme, but I had
never thought much about it. Perhaps I had been trained to think that
languages were always owned by someone? Whatever the case, Stroustrop
made a pointed that resonated with me.

I've definitely got my take on the additions in R6RS, and if the board
wants to hear what I think, then you know, that is great. Whether or
not the community *is* interested to vote, they are doing a great job
in both allowing *and* encouraging folks to do so.

Writing up a brief explanation of my interest in the standard along
with my vote is the *least* I could do!


Posted on the users mailing list.