How are we going to reach decisions on a new standard? How come the proposal by Guido was suddenly expanded? Shall I now post my version on a website and call it revision IV? Are we going to vote? If so who votes?.
No, no. In development, democracy sucks. We tried it a few years ago with the abc standard committee and it failed. What abc (and any development project for that matter) needs is someone who takes responsibility of the standard, someone that, after a lengthy discussion on the abcusers list, says: 'this is how it's going to be and that's the end of it.'
I'm actually very happy with the way things are going nowadays. Guido wrote a new draft standard that Irwin is now maintaining. Both are reasonable people that listen to advice that everyone on this list gives. I think they deserve our trust in their commitment to develop a standard that *works* and that a significant number of people are happy with. (I didn't write 'everyone' or 'most of us' because, after all, we're musicians... ;-))
The density of mail on the list is no guide to the opinion of list members. If someone raises an objection to some element of the standard do we then have to have 30 "I agree" messages on an already very active list to show this is the will of the assembly
I think we must first decide whether Revision III is a step forward.
It is. We have something we can work with.
Then, whichever version is taken as a basis for discussion, we need it reformulated in a hierarchically numbered fashion so that we can discuss
particular sections ( 2.7.6 or whatever), propose changes and come to a decision.
Numbering sections is a very good idea indeed.
It may be that we have to revive the developers list and restrict discussion to the new standard until we have sorted it.
This is what the standard committee tried. There's still a mailing list on the abc project website: <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=3343>.
What is Chris Walshaw's position on this? ABC is his invention and I would have thought he had some "ownership" of the standard. There is no reason why anyone should not be extend ABC and call it ABD, but for a self-selected group to take over a standard and change it gratuitously seems to set a very dodgy precedent - standard hijacking?
Chris stopped maintaining the standard a few years ago and before the standard committee was started up, we checked with him how he should feel about someone else taking over. He was delighted that this happened. Likewise, I'm sure that he'll be happy with the current efforts to update the standard. But I could send him a mail to make sure.
The best examples I can think of come from Microsoft (HTML, Java) and we wouldnt want to end up like that, now would we.
Therefore, I strongly suggest that we accept Irwin as the maintainer of the one and only abc standard and that we advise him to the best of our abilities. He is neutral, he is enthousiastic about abc, he seems like a reasonable chap. I think he'd be a good choice.
My humble opinion...
bert
-- Bert Van Vreckem <http://flanders.blackmill.net/> Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry
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