Comment by riffraff
8 hours ago
The scheme folks managed to shed complexity between R6RS and R7RS, I believe.
So perhaps I think the issue is not committees per se, but how the committees are put together and what are the driving values.
8 hours ago
The scheme folks managed to shed complexity between R6RS and R7RS, I believe.
So perhaps I think the issue is not committees per se, but how the committees are put together and what are the driving values.
Notably they didn't fully shed it, they compartmentalized it. They proposed to split the standard into two parts: r7rs-small, the more minimal subset closer in spirit to r5rs and missing a lot of stuff from r6rs, and r7rs-large, which would contain all of r6rs plus everyone's wildest feature dreams as well as the kitchen sink.
It worked remarkably well. r7rs-small was done in 2013 and is enjoyed by many. The large variant is still not done and may never be done. That's no problem though, the important point was that it created a place to point people with ideas to instead of outright telling them "no".