Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [ATTENTION PLEASE] standards process

[Tom Lord]

    > From: address@hidden (James Blackwell)

    > Rather than go back and forth about whether this process is the
    > same or different from that process, why don't we discuss the
    > merits and drawbacks of having a (any) process first.

First, I believe that it would be good (generally useful, fun) if
there existed some "standards documents", blessed by *some* ritual,
which are the "official" definition of (at least) core arch.
As GNU maintainer, if such documents existed (and were well done), I'd
want to make a policy about how GNU releases conform to them.

Second, I'd like to create a "destination point" forum for otherwise
neverending design discussions on g-a-u.   When a topic is being
talked to death, either it can be dropped, or someone can take the
effort of moving it to the next level (a lightly ritualized design
proposal/defense stage).

Those process niceties are orthogonal to any particular stream of
releases.  One reason the SRFI model is nice is so that even
semi-friendly yet slightly-divergent arch forks can share the same
standards process and whatever subset of documents is compatible
between them.  In spite of such a (hypothetical) fork, all of the
design thinking can still be kept in a shared forum.

The minimal thing is that I'm goign to write some formal specs, one
way or another.   If a SRFI-like thing is too heavyweight for this
stage (which it sounds like it is) I can find another (and probably
simpler) way.

-t