From JLS@liverpool.ac.uk Tue Mar 24 11:36:03 1992 Received: from danpost2.uni-c.dk by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA08241; Tue, 24 Mar 92 11:36:03 +0100 Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by danpost2.uni-c.dk (5.65/1.34) id AA12557; Tue, 24 Mar 92 10:34:51 GMT Message-Id: <9203241034.AA12557@danpost2.uni-c.dk> Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by vm.uni-c.dk (IBM VM SMTP V2R1) with BSMTP id 9218; Tue, 24 Mar 92 11:36:19 DNT Received: from UKACRL.BITNET by vm.uni-c.dk (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3232; Tue, 24 Mar 92 11:36:18 DNT Received: from RL.IB by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4298; Tue, 24 Mar 92 10:35:12 GMT Received: from RL.IB by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6137; Tue, 24 Mar 92 10:35:11 GMT Via: UK.AC.LIV.IBM; 24 MAR 92 10:35:03 GMT Received: from JLS@UK.AC.LIVERPOOL by MAILER(4.2.a); 24 Mar 1992 10:32:27 GMT Date: Tue, 24 Mar 92 09:40:14 GMT From: Lawrie Schonfelder Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.83) Re: Procedures comment by Psmith To: bill@amber.ssd.csd.harris.com, SC22/WG5 members In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 20 Mar 92 10:39:14 -0500 X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Bill has a point, as always, BUT, also as always! No voting system is perfect. A simple majority rule can result in a tyranny of the majority over the minority. A proportional system can result in a minority permanently thwarting the wishes of a majority. bicameral system does something to overcome these problems in many national political systems (Australia also has a House elected on an equal population constituency basis and a senate on equal representation for each of the states so I am very aware of the system) but such cumbersome processes would I think be in appropriate in the standards making arena. In the world as it is the voting units in international affairs remain the nation states (we have just aquired many more due to the break up of the USSR) and short of a further major revolution in international structures and relationships I do not see that changing in the next 10 years. Therefore ISO will remain based on National body voting. If those of us who favour a US of Europe succeed then come the millenium maybe Europe will revert to a single vote on International affairs but until then we are stuck with there being multiple nation states in Europe and hense more than one vote in ISO. I believe that there is however considerable room for improvement in the procedures used within ISO and would be only too happy to collaborate with Bill or anyone else to achieve this. This in fact is to some extent what the L12 task group are trying to do. However I do not think trying to change the one nation one vote rule in ISO is a practical proposition at this stage. The two country rule is a safeguard against a small nation tyranny by providing very strong consensus requirements. My point about the USA possibly adapting its procedures to align more appropriately with those of ISO is that that is what most other countries have done. Most other countries have accepted that as far as IT standards are concerned national standards are secondary to ISO ones. Even CEN the EEC standards body has agreed that it will not make independent European standards where a relevant ISO standard exists but will adopt the the ISO standard. The major change between 1977 and 1990 was that during the 80's the rest of the world became more important in the total IT market and hence ISO standards became more important than merely national ones, even ANSI ones. Many of the procedural difficulties that we had were a result of J3 having to try to run two sets of conflicting procedures simultaneously. The strain became too much at times. We are therefore trying to sort out the rules of the game a bit more clearly at the outset this time, and the fundamental principle that must apply is that for the ISO Fortran standards arena J3 proposes WG5 disposes. Just a warm glow I hope (;-) Lawrie PS. The US may be the largest single nation market but it is a shrinking proportion of the whole global market. Should we be arranging votes of ISO by GNP, by population, by numbers of registered Fortran programmers, by numbers of multilingual programmers, .... more fuel?(;-)