Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!ptsfa!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Machine readable version of ANSI draft Message-ID: <1604@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Thu, 1-Jan-87 21:58:54 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1604 Posted: Thu Jan 1 21:58:54 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Jan-87 02:36:31 EST References: <1525@hoptoad.uucp> <4350@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 28 In article <4350@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>, Barry Margolin writes: > In article <1525@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: > > But it appears that technology is not going to save us from > >brain damaged policies in our standards bureacracy; I guess we'll have > >to reform the bureacracies instead, which is a lot less fun than building > >good technologies. > > ANSI is basically a publishing house. Do you know of any other major > publishing house that would be in favor of you copying their books onto > the net? Why is this brain damage? If ANSI is a publishing house, let's eliminate it and contract to Prentice-Hall or Doubleday to publish our standards. They do a better printing job, bind their books well, and sell them for cheaper. And when they publish a book where machine readable copy makes sense, they make machine readable available (e.g. P-H sells the Xinu tape). I wouldn't object to paying $65 to get a tape of the proposed ANSI C standard, which is what the printed version costs. The trouble is that ANSI makes the rules for how standards are created, *in addition to* publishing them. And they warp the rules, which warps the standards, so they can make money. And we get to live with the resulting standards. See my .signature below. -- John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu I forsee a day when there are two kinds of C compilers: standard ones and useful ones ... just like Pascal and Fortran. Are we making progress yet? -- ASC:GUTHERY%slb-test.csnet