Standards Update, IEEE 1003.5: Ada bindings

[Ran Atkinson]

Submitted-by: rja7m at chaos.cs.Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson)

The comment in the snitch report about the committee "knowing" that
30 days being insufficient time to review the P1003.5 draft is distressing.

Indeed I am one of the folks who is going to try to review the draft and
30 days is no where near enough time to do a proper job.  The notion of
starting at different places is NOT helpful because it is likely that my
objections won't be evenly distributed across the document and because any
I miss for lack of time can't be raised in a future ballot.

The TCOS administration should REQUIRE that balloting groups be given
sufficient time to review documents thoroughly.  Otherwise we will end
up with incompletely reviewed standards which we will then have to try
to live with.

This just serves to reinforce my view that the POSIX effort has changed
from standardising existing practice with due deliberation to one to
create as many standards documents as possible as quickly as possible
without due regard for existing practice or internal consistency among
the various documents that are under P1003.

Standards are a good thing if done carefully.  I'm concerned that the
POSIX effort is moving too hastily to be truly useful to us users.

Randall Atkinson
randall at Virginia.EDU

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 113