[TUHS] ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection

[Charles H Sauer (he/him)]

I was waiting for Heinz to say something, assuming he would at least say 
what he did about the beginnings of POSIX.

Another IEEE standard of great historical import is IEEE 754-1985 for 
representing floating point numbers. Many of the 801 people wanted to 
preserve IBM Hexadecimal floating point introduced with System/360. One 
of my best memories of Phil Hester is his fulfilled promise that 754 
would prevail in what became the RS/6000. Charlie

On 6/26/2024 2:34 PM, Heinz Lycklama wrote:
> The POSIX Standard for the UNIX System was actually
> started under the umbrella of /usr/group, which was
> comprised mostly of commercial companies and users
> of the UNIX system. /usr/group was the forerunner
> of UniForum. I chaired the /usr/group standard from
> 1981 to 1984, after which we turned the work over
> to the IEEE, chaired by Jim Isaac and co-chaired by
> myself. I worked for INTERACTIVE Systems Corp,
> in Santa Monica, CA- the first commercial UNIX
> company that provided for UNIX system software
> on the DEC PDP11 and VAX computers, and led the
> porting of the UNIX System to many different computer
> architectures from micro to mainframe.
> 
> Heinz
> 
> On 6/26/2024 11:52 AM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
>> On Wednesday, June 26th, 2024 at 11:43 AM, James Johnston 
>> <audioskeptic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ANSI accredits US standards committees and delegates, both to US and 
>>> International Meetings.
>>> ANSI can vote to accept a standard. While I don't know the issue 
>>> behind POSIX, it's entirely possible that ANSI accredited IEEE to 
>>> standardize things. They have done this to many various groups for 
>>> standards within their wheelhouse. Sometimes this has worked well, 
>>> sometimes it has worked to the interest of some particular entity, 
>>> speaking as someone who has spent one to many days hanging out in 
>>> standards meetings as a "technical expert".
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 11:35 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think historically ANSI did languages.
>>>> But, I don't know specifically why IEEE became the standards body 
>>>> for POSIX. I did participate for a while in the IEEE standards 
>>>> process (not POSIX, but something else), and I knew it as a large, 
>>>> very active, well managed organization, always eager to take on new 
>>>> things (such as the thing that I was engaged in). So maybe that was 
>>>> one reason.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe a greater reason is that the part of IEEE standards that did 
>>>> software was chaired by a person from DEC (forgot his name). I'm 
>>>> sure DEC had a strong interest in a UNIX-based standard, if only to 
>>>> make sure that it didn't go completely wild and negate DEC's huge 
>>>> head start in selling machines to run UNIX.
>>>>
>>>> Marc
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 12:22 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Good morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the 
>>>>> rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the 
>>>>> publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards. C was published 
>>>>> via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was instead published 
>>>>> by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Was there every any consideration of C 
>>>>> through IEEE or POSIX through ANSI instead? Is there an appreciable 
>>>>> difference suggested by the difference in publishers? In any case, 
>>>>> both saw subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to an 
>>>>> international standard seems to lead to the same organizations.
>>>>>
>>>>> - Matt G.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> James D. (jj) Johnston
>>>
>>> Chief Scientist, Immersion Networks
>> Well and that touches on one of the standards that adds some interest 
>> to this discussion: "An American National Standard IEEE Standard 
>> Pascal Computer Programming Language".  In this case, ANSI/IEEE 770 
>> X3.97 is the Pascal standard as sponsored by both IEEE *and* ANSI.  
>> The lines can certainly blur.  Another example of a language standard 
>> under IEEE is 1076, VHDL.  Could it be interpreted as such:
>>
>> IEEE is one institute among many that may originate the creation and 
>> publication of standards in the field of electrical engineering and 
>> adjacent fields.  ANSI, in turn, is a national general standards body 
>> that publishes standards created by groups such as IEEE as well as 
>> those created relatively independently by their own committees such as 
>> X3.
>>
>> In other words you're liable to have IEEE standards that get tracked 
>> as ANSI, but the likelihood of ANSI cooking something up in their own 
>> committees and then bouncing it out to IEEE is lower if present at all?
>>
>> - Matt G.
>>
>> P.S. If anyone wants a trial-use copy of POSIX, there's one sitting on 
>> eBay right now https://www.ebay.com/itm/145798619385
> 

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