In article RAA16195@taumet.eng.sun.com, Stephen.Clamage@eng.sun.com (Steve Clamage) writes:
>
>The circumstances surrounding Ada and C++ are not comparable.
>
>The US Dept of Defense has always owned Ada and the trademark "Ada".

Lance Kibblewhite was kind enough to tell me that statement is no longer
true, and to point me to the Ada home page
 http://www.adahome.com/
where I found a history paper that said the DoD let the trademark
lapse in 1987. Live and learn.

That makes my previous analysis invalid, so in the immortal words
of Emily Litella, "Never mind!".

---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage@eng.sun.com




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Steve Clamage wrote:
>
> In article 6597@cs.purdue.edu, Markus Kuhn <kuhn@cs.purdue.edu> writes:
> >David Emery wrote in comp.std.misc:
> >
> >> It's worth nothing that both Ada83 and Ada95 have -always- been
> >> publically available on the Net.  The original Ada83 copyright
> >> specifically permitted republication of the standard, as long as
> >> any additions are clearly marked to make then distinguishable from
> >> the standard.  There were some negotiations with ISO to preserve
> >> the wide availabiity of Ada95, while meeting ISO copyright laws.
> >
> >That is a very interesting lesson learned!  I hope the folks in the
> >C++ committee are smart enough to be able to negotiate similar
> >copyright conditions for the final C++ standard, just like the
> >Ada95 folks did.  It obviously is possible.
>
> The circumstances surrounding Ada and C++ are not comparable.
>
> The US Dept of Defense has always owned Ada and the trademark "Ada".
> That means they get to dicate use of the programming language called
> "Ada". They determined to make full documentation freely available.
> ISO had the choice of not issuing a standard for Ada, or of complying
> with US DoD wishes regarding its distribution.
>
> Nobody owns C++, and "C++" is not a protected name. ISO and ANSI have
> policy regarding how their standards get released and distributed. The
> C++ Committee has no leverage for negotiating other terms with them. Our
> choices are not to issue a C++ standard, to issue (somehow) a "standard"
> which is not blessed by an official body, or to comply with policy.
>
> That said, the Committee has said loudly and often through channels
> that we would like to make the standard freely available. So far,
> the responses have been along the lines of "Thanks for sharing your
> views."

Maybe it would have been better, if the original C++ language
specification would have been put under an ruling similar to the
GNU General Public License, so that you may copy and change the
specification paper, just as you may copy and change GNU software.
Then ANSI/ISO would have had no chance, but to allow the new
standard to be copied freely.
Of course, it's now too late for C++, but maybe such a LS-GPL
should already get constructed, so if anyone ever invents a good
new language (C+=2?) which he would like to make freely available,
he could just apply this LS-GPL to his language specification,
such preventing situations like the current with C++.

For C++, maybe a good idea would be to write a language specification
for the GNU g++ language (including the C++-extensions, but with every
non-standard item explicitly marked as different from C++ standard),
and put this specification for g++ (which happens to be compatible to
C++, but is definitive another language, so it would probably not
conflict with the C++ standard copyrights) under such a LS-GPL.
Then from this one you simply could find out what is really standard
C++ by simply skipping the parts marked as "different from C++".

BTW, to have a g++ standard would be nice anyway (but unfortunately
the only g++ compiler - named "g++" - would probably still not be
fully g++ compliant :-) )
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David Emery wrote in comp.std.misc:

> It's worth nothing that both Ada83 and Ada95 have -always- been
> publically available on the Net.  The original Ada83 copyright
> specifically permitted republication of the standard, as long as
> any additions are clearly marked to make then distinguishable from
> the standard.  There were some negotiations with ISO to preserve
> the wide availabiity of Ada95, while meeting ISO copyright laws.
>
> The wide availability of the Ada RM has resulted in a user
> community that is much more knowledgable of the difference
> between 'standard' and 'implementation'.  Generally Ada people
> argue about the legality of programs, as opposed to the results
> of the program.  This distinction presumes that Ada compilers
> correctly implement the language, and Ada users are quick to tell
> the compiler vendor when the compiler is in error.
>
> I think this has been A Very Good Thing.  it has produced a very
> sophisticated user community, and also an implementor community,
> all of whom have read and understand (to varying degrees) the
> language reference.

That is a very interesting lesson learned!  I hope the folks in the
C++ committee are smart enough to be able to negotiate similar
copyright conditions for the final C++ standard, just like the
Ada95 folks did.  It obviously is possible.

All the Ada compiler packages that I have seen so far came
with a copy of the full Ada standard!  Wouldn't it be nice if this
would also be possible for every ISO C++ compiler distribution?

Markus

--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu
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In article 6597@cs.purdue.edu, Markus Kuhn <kuhn@cs.purdue.edu> writes:
>David Emery wrote in comp.std.misc:
>
>> It's worth nothing that both Ada83 and Ada95 have -always- been
>> publically available on the Net.  The original Ada83 copyright
>> specifically permitted republication of the standard, as long as
>> any additions are clearly marked to make then distinguishable from
>> the standard.  There were some negotiations with ISO to preserve
>> the wide availabiity of Ada95, while meeting ISO copyright laws.
>
>That is a very interesting lesson learned!  I hope the folks in the
>C++ committee are smart enough to be able to negotiate similar
>copyright conditions for the final C++ standard, just like the
>Ada95 folks did.  It obviously is possible.

The circumstances surrounding Ada and C++ are not comparable.

The US Dept of Defense has always owned Ada and the trademark "Ada".
That means they get to dicate use of the programming language called
"Ada". They determined to make full documentation freely available.
ISO had the choice of not issuing a standard for Ada, or of complying
with US DoD wishes regarding its distribution.

Nobody owns C++, and "C++" is not a protected name. ISO and ANSI have
policy regarding how their standards get released and distributed. The
C++ Committee has no leverage for negotiating other terms with them. Our
choices are not to issue a C++ standard, to issue (somehow) a "standard"
which is not blessed by an official body, or to comply with policy.

That said, the Committee has said loudly and often through channels
that we would like to make the standard freely available. So far,
the responses have been along the lines of "Thanks for sharing your
views."

---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage@eng.sun.com
---
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