[J3] (SC22WG5.6189) RE: [ukfortran] October meeting visa invitation letter

[Bryce Adelstein Lelbach aka wash]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 8:10 AM Bill Long via J3
<j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
> Agreed.  I would point out that some people have an aversion to, and concerns about,  products from Microsoft (of which GitHub is one, and Skype another).   Google and Facebook have acquired tarnished reputations  as well.  And don’t get the cyber security folks started about ZOOM.
>
> Also, some countries have an aversion to US facilities involved with nuclear weapons (Japan comes to mind, understandably).  As an example, we cannot install a system at (at least parts of) LANL that uses Fujitsu-made processors.  (Unfortunate, since their new ARM chips look very good. Hopefully an alternate ARM-SVE vendor will appear.)   Ties to Sandia would be similarly problematic.  However, some large US DoE labs, such as LBNL (Berkeley Lab), would be in the clear on this issue.

I think it will be quite difficult for people with an aversion to
products from particular large tech companies to meaningfully
participate in ISO standards. A substantial amount of official
ISO/INCITS business is done in Microsoft Word documents, for example.

Additionally, the SC22 Secretariat is provided by the US national body
and for many years was solely funded by Microsoft. If you've
participated in the publication of any ISO programming language in the
past decade, the standard you've worked on has been supported by
Microsoft.

The reality is that if one wants to participate in international
standards development, one will often have to work with technologies,
companies, and individuals from all across the industry.

While I understand and appreciate privacy and security concerns (some
people's employers block GitHub or Google service from work), I think
that a reasonable degree of flexibility should be expected. While its
important to understand who may have limitations in the technologies
and organizations they are willing and able to work with, I wouldn't
let these limitations affect decision making unless they impact a
significant percentage of the active participants.

I would encourage us to focus on the concrete limitations that we have
today. Are there a substantial number of active members of the Fortran
committee who are unable, for any reason, to use GitHub? Google Docs?
Other technologies?

P.S. Sandia has hosted meetings for various ISO committees in the
past, as have a number of countries that have similar types of
limitations. The viability of these meetings has always hinged on one
thing alone: would there be a quorum at the meeting? If any other
criterion is used, you end up in a bad place.

-- 
Bryce Adelstein Lelbach aka wash
US Programming Language Standards (PL22) Chair
ISO C++ Library Evolution Chair
CppCon and C++Now Program Chair
CUDA Core C++ Libraries (Thrust, CUB, libcu++) Lead @ NVIDIA
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