Comment by uecker
1 day ago
Being free was important and history could have taken many paths, but this does not explain why it is still important today and has not been replaced despite many alternatives. WG14 consists mostly of industry representatives.
It is important today just like COBOL and Fortran are with ongoing ISO updates, sunken cost, no one is getting more money out of rewriting their systems just because, unless there are external factors, like government regulations.
Then we have the free beer UNIX clones as well.
Those industry members of WG14 don't seem to have done much security wise language improvement during the last 50 years.
I think this is far from the truth.