[This document is NCITS/J13 99/001]

		    === Call for Participation ===

Greetings from the Committee Formerly Known as X3J13.  This message
is being sent to the x3j13 and other Lisp mailing lists.  Many will
consequently receive multiple copies -- for which I apologize -- but
the nature of the announcement is such that it must be broadly
distributed.

I am writing as the new chair of the Technical Committee NCITS/J13.
NCITS (previously known as X3) is a voluntary industry association
that creates information technology standards in cooperation with
organizations such as ANSI and ISO.  J13 (formerly known as X3J13)
is the technical committee responsible for the ANSI Common Lisp
standard.

ANSI Document X3.226, the American National Standard for Programming
Language LISP (actually Common Lisp), was approved as an American
National Standard on December 8, 1994.  NCITS has notified me:

  In accordance with ANSI and NCITS policy, action must be taken
  during the four-year anniversary of a standard's approval date to
  either reaffirm or withdraw the standard. Should the TC's review
  result in a recommendation to revise a standard, a project
  proposal describing the proposed revision should be submitted with
  the recommendation to reaffirm, pending revision. If a standard is
  currently under revision, the customary four-year action would be
  reaffirmation of the current standard, pending completion of the
  revision.
  ...
  If a recommendation is not forthcoming from J13 before the July
  1999 meeting of NCITS, NCITS will be forced to make a
  recommendation on this issue without the benefit of the Technical
  Committee's input.

In other words, it is necessary for J13 to act formally in the next
several months or the standard could lapse in December.  The purpose
of this message is to explain the options open to J13 and then how
interested parties can participate in the committee.

J13 has three broad choices for action:

  - Recommend that the standard be withdrawn.
  - Recommend that it be reaffirmed as it stands.
  - Submit a project proposal for revision, or extension, or other
    new work, keeping the existing standard in effect during that
    process.  The changes could be major or minor, subject only to
    the approval by NCITS of the work proposal.

I cannot as chair presume what the committee will decide, but I do
anticipate that the committee will at least reaffirm the standard.
There are also also any number of possible revisions and extensions
that the committee could undertake, but it is much less clear
whether there will be sufficient interest and committment to
undertake them.  All this will need careful, realistic consideration
once deliberation commences.

I will be calling a J13 meeting within the next several months, the
exact time, format, and venue to be decided according to the needs
and convenience of the members.  I am at this time issuing a call
for participation: If Common Lisp affects you or your organization,
and you are not already a member, you should consider joining J13.
Both individuals and organizations may join.  Membership is $600 per
year and is not restricted to United States organizations.  If you
think you might be interested, please contact me.

Membership should not be taken casually.  Standards work is hard
work, requiring commitment of hoth time and money (occasional
travel, etc.).  Voting members are required to attend at least two
out of every three meetings.  In recent years ANSI has expressed
favorable opinions on the acceptability of electronic meetings (but
they must be real-time, not email).  To the extent possible I am
inclined to try to use them so as to minimize financial and other
barriers to participation.  However, members should anticipate at
least occasional travel expenses.  Where possible, non-electronic
meetings could be piggybacked onto other industry meetings such as
OOPSLA and LUV.

Those who are cannot or do not desire to become official members of
NCITS/J13 may still participate in the committee's work via the
mailing list.  The Lisp community and X3J13 have a long history of
productive deliberations through mailing lists.  Although formal
action by J13 requires a meeting or letter vote, much of the real
technical work -- discussing, proposing, drafting, reviewing --
happens electronically.  Anyone seriously interested is welcome to
subscribe to the list.

    x3j13@ai.sri.com			; the list itself
    x3j13-request@ai.sri.com		; requests to join, etc.

To summarize:

 - Please contact me (email is best) if you are seriously interested
   in NCITS/J13 so that I can guage the size of the community.
 - Please subscribe to the x3j13 list if you want to monitor or
   contribute to the discussions on status of the standard.

Discussion will commence on the x3j13 list next week.

Steve Haflich          smh@franz.com
Franz Inc.
1995 University Avenue
Berkeley CA 94704
USA 
(510)548-3600

For information about NCITS see http://www.ncits.org