Re: What could J4 (or WG4) do

"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:gFIcg.184820$WI1.7656@pd7tw2no...


> Presumably if I had been prepared to foot my own bills, technically I
> could have joined J4, which (in theory) would have made me the Canadian J4
> rep ???

J4 membership presumes INCITS (previously NCITS) membership, which in
addition to the costs of attending the J4 meetings (and the fees to cover
the costs of those meetings) has its own membership fees, which some private
individuals have protested were too high.

At the time you're discussing, J4 and the US Technical Advisory Group to WG4
were separate (the latter consisting of the US members of J4); their
functions were subsequently merged and the membership distinctions erased.

In the last reference I see, Canada is still a "P" member of ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC22, the parent organization to WG4, but eligibility to be a Canadian
delegate (or even to be HoD) is a Canadian question.

> ... Stephen had three 'substitutes,

Technically, "alternate members".

> yours truly, Huib Klink from Netherlands (Chuck referred to him as Don
> Schricker's deputy as he is apparently currently on the M/F payroll)

Last we heard, yes.  But, again, Huib was Don Schricker's alternate *as J4
rep for Micro Focus*; that conveys nothing as to Don's position as chair.

> Wim E. also for Netherlands.

Wim retired at the WG4 meeting at The Hague, with a ceremony conveying a
knighthood on behalf of the Dutch government.

> Back to Huib - at the time he was working for an independent software
> house and somebody suggested he should join J4. (A very good technical
> man, particularly OO - as Bill, Donald or Pete could attest to from
> softwaresimple days - when a small group of us were discussing OO).

I agree; I've seen Huib at several WG4 meetings, and he's an asset to the
process.  Wish we cound get him to cross the pond for J4 meetings.

> Naturally I was making a vacation, (first trip back since '75), as well as
> attending the J4 meeting. As I was going to be there in Newbury made sense
> I should sit in on some  of the ISO(WG4) meeting to see how that
> functioned.

Somewhat confusing in a case like that, when part of the meeting's J4 and
all of a sudden everybody puts on different hats because it's become a WG4
meeting ... and then a couple of days later everybody changes hats again and
it's back to J4 ...

> Ian put me in touch with the Canadian WG4 team - what a run around. Yes I
> could certainly participate PROVIDED I made a commitment to be a member
> and attend their *own* meetings which could be say in BC, Ontario and
> perhaps Quebec. - assuming I had the money to become a 'frequent flyer'.

Sorry to hear that -- but similar rules apply in the US, which does have
eligibility requirements as to who can be a US delegate, and in our case, if
I remember it right, that includes attendance at either the two most recent
J4 meetings as a member or at the most recent WG4 meeting as a US delegate.
So in at least the case of these two countries, some demonstration of
commitment to the process is expected!

> So I didn't see any of the WG4 action.

Even at Newbury?

> Don't know whether Chuck is prepared to expand. ISO is a bit like the
> bloody Free Masons. Rules are set at their HQ in Zurich (?) and they seem
> to be obsessed with confidentiality - makes them more secretive than Opus
> Dei :-). So there is bureaucratic BS with ISO, not dissimilar to the
> nonsense you have with separate MEPs attending the EU Parliament, doing
> their own thing, independent of the MPs in the House of Commons, and the
> Euro bureaucrats determining that UK sausages are inedible !

On the other hand, people might expect to show up and get everybody to jump
on board for one idea or another, when the likes of DIN and BSI have spent
significant time and effort crafting positions that the newcomer to the
process might not like.

> See if you can get a handle on ISO/WG4 - I've had no luck googling for WG4
> representatives for the various countries.

ISO/IEC Working Group *membership* and *representation* is by *country*,
just as INCITS/J4 membership is by *company*.  One country, one vote, hence
the importance of the National Standards Bodies establishing positions.  And
the Head of Delegation for a country (to say nothing of the composition of
the delegation as a whole) is established by the National Standards Body for
that country some time before the Working Group meeting.  What the
composition of the delegations was at one meeting need have no bearing on
what it will be at the next.

> Certainly their deliberations are confidential. (Apparently both the
> Ukraine and the PRC were going to make contributions/comments on the TR
> for Collections - don't think it ever happened).

I remember that we were expecting comments, but haven't received them.
Note, however, that the Collection Class library TR has not yet gone to
*formal* international review.

> I don't want to get into the argy-bargy on COBOL - and as of to-date I
> don't think I want to program any longer in any language or script !
> But with the couple of threads tackling COBOL at the moment - I think the
> following is NUMERO UNO :-
>
> Will COBOL survive ? And I don't mean do James, Pete or Robert think that
> COBOL will survive.

I think that depends on what you mean by "survive".  There's a heck of a lot
of software out there that's still running, and it's still in COBOL, and
it's still getting recompiled and tweaked so that it continues to run on new
platforms and new releases of software, and it's still serving the needs of
major international corporations.  Do I think all that stuff's going to get
replaced by applications written in Java or C++ next w, or next year, or
two years from now?  No, I don't; in fact, I would not be at all surprised
to see Unisys working to keep its *COBOL74* compiler running five, and
probably ten, years from now.  We started trying to get rid of our COBOL(68)
compiler in the late 1980's, finally "pulled the plug" at the end of 1999,
and had customers paying us Many Bucks to continue to support it Just For
Them for a couple of years more!

> Much more pertinent, do the people spending money on developing COBOL
> compilers think that COBOL will survive. I'm not thinking of just the four
> vendors on J4 but ALSO Liant (RM/COBOL), Acu, HP/Compaq, KOBOL and the
> Open Source 'Johnnies' etc.

I think to a degree the points are orthogonal.  There is much about COBOL
that is Trailing Edge Technology, and one of the benefits of Trailing Edge
Technology is that, by and large, it works.

> Certainly the J4 structure could act as 'host' encouraging ALL (including
> the non-J4 participants) to attend a Brain-storming session;

Did that, specifically, in June 2003, just before the WG4 meeting in Las
Vegas, in June of that year.  Did everything we could to publicize it, I
think including here in this forum.  Some people came, and a number of ideas
were brought forward from that COBOL workshop to the WG4 meeting.

>  if they reluctantly agree that it is only a question of time before COBOL
> becomes just an historic blip, then all the other suggestions, e.g., 'Can
> we get everybody to agree about a Standard and implement it ?', or Bill's
> left of field suggestion of a separate PC version, just become academic
> idealism.

Again, I've said repeatedly I think there is value in a standard even if it
is simply to provide guidelines for implementors as to how a consortium of
interested parties think a given feature should be handled.

For example, one of the things WG4 has historically taken a strong stand on
is the idea that new features in the language should be available to the
user of "core COBOL"; limiting stuff like user-defined functions to the
OO-style environment does not further the cause of *growing* COBOL, it
basically is a divisive move.

> I could offer some positive suggestions - ly I just don't see them
> being seriously taken up. It is probably too late to try and view the
> topic with a different perspective anyway.

Might well be.  We do what we can!

> Reflect on this topic of COBOL - Have you noticed how many hundreds of the
> participants in this Newsgroup have done cartwheels of joy, to get
> involved and put in their two cents of suggestions ? (So many of them are
> just waiting for that magic birthday - when they are 65 !).

I'll be 62 next month ...     ;-(

-Chuck Stevens