Thread "What's the deal with C99?" in comp.lang.c discusses the C99 standard, and people are among other things speculating about why gcc was never represented in the committee. I'd be interesting if you'd reply there, e.g. to to message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from lawrence.jones in the C committee:
> (...) I suspect it's the usual open source problem: no one is > sufficiently interested to do it on their own and it's not a high > enough priority for the steering committee to encourage/direct someone > to do it. (...) Searching the gcc.gnu.org site I found a few anti-C-committe postings from apparent C++ committee members, but not much else. Another exchange from the thread: Paul Hsieh (criticizing the C99 standard and the committee): > Well, in the case of gcc, apparently the variable length arrays are > fatal, because some critical amount of the code out there that uses > gcc relies on the specific gcc semantics which conflict with C99's > VLAs. Jones: > It's interesting to note that GCC is the only major compiler that has > never been represented in the standardization process. I consider that > a major loss for GCC, the C standard, and the C community in general. Hsieh: > I agree. So what the hell is the committee planning on doing about > it? Jones: > That's not the committee's job. In fact, it would probably go against > the rules. Participation is open to all, but actively soliciting one > vendor would open the committee to complaints from other vendors who > were not solicited and raise questions about the fairness of the > process. -- Hallvard
