From walt@netcom.com Wed Mar 18 23:28:36 1992
Received: from netcom.netcom.com by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8)
	id AA22718; Wed, 18 Mar 92 23:28:36 +0100
Received: by netcom.netcom.com (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA24598; Wed, 18 Mar 92 14:28:48 PST
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 92 14:28:48 PST
From: walt@netcom.com (Walt Brainerd)
Message-Id: <9203182228.AA24598@netcom.netcom.com>
To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk
Subject: Market surveys
X-Charset: ASCII
X-Char-Esc: 29

> We need to get back to our roots and analyze the Fortran market needs.

Let me also try to make this as complicated as possible and maybe help
convince some people that this is doomed to failure.

Compiler vendors can try to estimate their customers, the Fortran
programmers, and, as we have seen, this is pretty difficult.  But
these folks have their own "customers", the users of the programs,
from purchasers of a mathematical library from IMSL or NAG or Magus
to the purchaser of an airline ticket who gets his plane designed
by a Fortran program (or whose medical equipment is controlled by
a Fortran program when the plane designer encounters a bug).  I would
bet that most of these folks would come down hard on the side of
reliability and maintainability over performance, but I doubt that
any "market survey" anybody on X3J3 devises will take these people
into account.

This is one more way to say that X3J3 is not a "representative democracy"
in the sense of each person/dollar/line-of-code having the same amount
of representation (Andrew, Loren, Keith,  and I have less of a vote in
the US Senate than people from any other state, but I sill would call
it a representative democracy), but in the sense that the members of
the committee must try to represent some class (not all the same as
Richard points out) and do their best to understand the needs of
the rest.  It is unfortunate that representatives of vendors are
some times put in the position of representing only the economic
well being of their own company, however much that will harm others.
And, of course, representatives of users could be put in the same
position.

> Too many of us "nasty vendors" have been in the way of progress.  :-)

You have made it awfully tempting to say we have found another point
of agreement, but I surely wouldn't do anything like that,
especially now that I have a fairly close relationship with a vendor. :-)

> FYI.  Presley