Re: Scheme Implementors' Workshop

["Guillermo J. Rozas" <gjr@martigny.ai.mit.edu>]

I would like to add my concerns to Kent's and Alan's.
I can understand a meeting of implementors, I can understand a meeting
of users.  I can understand a meeting of both.

I have a really hard time with a meeting "by invitation only".  Under
such constraints, it is hard for me to believe that it is really a
meeting of implementors as the announcement claims, as opposed to a
meeting of "politically correct" implementors.  It is hard to believe
that this meeting has not been organized not only to exclude users as
a class, but especially to exclude certain
implementors/implementations who the organizers can't deal with for
some reason or another.

I also agree with Alan that further enhancements to the Scheme
standards should occur under the auspices of such organizations as
IEEE and ANSI.  These organizations have well-established rules to
guarantee inclusion not only of users but also of dissenting voices.

The claim has been made that the reason for this "coup d'etat" is the
lack of agreements among the authors, exacerbated by the unanimity
rule.  Yet these standards bodies have no such unanimity rule, so
there would be no deadlock arising from the strong opinions of a vocal
minority.

I can't help but think that this meeting is precisely designed to
impose (as opposed to debate and convice of) one particular future of
the scheme language.  If such a future is so compelling, it should
stand on its own merits under open debate, and not impossed by a
self-appointed clique.

I hope that I am being overly paranoid, and am reading too much into
the original announcement and the additional response by Matthias and
Mitch.  However, to my knowledge neither of them is associated with a
major implementation, hence the protestations of innocence ring hollow
in my ears.