who owns C

[Emmanuel Delahaye]

Hi I was just curious about something for future reference

Is ANSI C Open Source/Freeware or is it owned by a company

There is no more "ANSI C". There is ISO C that is own by the ISO
(International Standard Organization). It belongs to mankind.

 

[Keith Thompson]

There is no more "ANSI C". There is ISO C that is own by the ISO
(International Standard Organization). It belongs to mankind.

No, it belongs to ISO; the rest of mankind has to pay ISO (or a
national body) to get a copy of it.

ANSI is the US national standards body, a member of ISO. The ISO C
standard was adopted (automatically?) as an ANSI standard. It's more
accurate to refer to it as ISO C, but calling it ANSI C is not
entirely wrong. (I may have some of the details wrong.)

BTW, "ISO" is officially not an acronym; the organization's full name
is "International Organization for Standardization" in English,
"Organisation internationale de normalisation" in French.

 

[Dan Pop]

... and if Dan thinks that $18 is not "at cost", he apparently doesn't know
much about book publishing.

First, it is not Dan who made any comments about costs and prices, but
expecting our resident idiot to follow the attributions in a thread is
completely unrealistic...

The PDF sold for $18 comes for free to ANSI. The only costs involved
are those related to the processing of the transaction and the actual
data transfer (both are probably peanuts).

My wife works in the field & my parents in law
run a small publishing company, and for small-volume multifont print jobs,
the printing costs alone are high enough to make you wince, never mind the
cost of technical proofreaders and editors capable of understanding the
subject matter but still able to edit. $200 is cheap compared to some books
my wife has edited.

Except that the editing work is already done by the C standard editor.
All organisations selling printed copies of the standard have to do is
actually print it. I have no clue how close the $200 are to the cost of
the printing, but, then again, I've never made any comments on this
topic.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

There is no more "ANSI C".

Huh?!? What happened to the C89 specification? Was it renamed in the
meantime?

There is ISO C that is own by the ISO
(International Standard Organization). It belongs to mankind.

These sentences are mutually contradictory.

Dan

 

[Mark McIntyre]

I believe you're confused regarding the quotation levels. It was Dan
who initially claimed the C standard was available at cost, and Keith
Thompson who thought the $18 for the PDF must embody a profit margin.

My apologies to Dan, and contumely is heaped instead on Keith !

 

[Keith Thompson]

My apologies to Dan, and contumely is heaped instead on Keith !

Where it is equally undeserved.

I don't know, or particularly care, whether the $18 includes a profit
margin or not. My guess is that it does.

The original confusion, I think, was that Dan mistakenly used the
phrase "at cost" to mean "at a cost" (i.e., not free (that's
free-as-in-beer)), whereas my understanding is that the phrase implies
that the price covers only the marginal cost of production.

I paid my $18 several years ago, and at this point I don't
particularly care what they did with the money. (And if you want to
talk about whether the standard *should* be free, look through the
comp.std.c archives, where it's already been discussed to death.)

 

[Keith Thompson]

In <[email protected]> Emmanuel Delahaye


Huh?!? What happened to the C89 specification? Was it renamed in the
meantime?

I thought ANSI officially adopted the ISO C90 specification when it
came out -- and also officially adopted the C99 specification as an
ANSI standard.

I don't know whether this makes it incorrect refer to C89 as "ANSI C".

 

[Dan Pop]

I thought ANSI officially adopted the ISO C90 specification when it
came out -- and also officially adopted the C99 specification as an
ANSI standard.

But this fact didn't change the name of that specification. It continued
to be ISO C9[09] even after the adoption by ANSI. The title page of your
$18 version bought from ANSI must look approximately like this:

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 9899

Second edition
1999-12-01










Programming languages - C

Langages de programmation - C










Processed and adopted by ASC the National Committee for
Information Technology Standards (NCITS) and approved by
ANSI as an American National Standard.

Date of ANSI Approval: 5/22/2000

Published by American National Standards Institute,
11 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036

Copyright 2000 by Information Technology Industry Council
(ITI). All rights reserved.

These materials are subject to copyright claims of
International Standardization Organization (ISO), International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), American National Standards
Institute (ANSI), and Information Technology Industry Council
(ITI). Not for resale. No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form, including an electronic retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of ITI. All
requests pertaining to this standard should be submitted to ITI,
1250 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 20005.

Printed in the United States of America







Reference number
ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E)

© ISO/IEC 1999

I don't know whether this makes it incorrect refer to C89 as "ANSI C".

It is the *only* C specification elaborated by ANSI and, therefore, the
only one deserving the informal name of "ANSI C". Also note that *all*
these names are informal, the formal ones looking as in the above quote:
ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E) or ANSI X3.159-1989.

Dan

 

[Keith Thompson]

I thought ANSI officially adopted the ISO C90 specification when it
came out -- and also officially adopted the C99 specification as an
ANSI standard.

But this fact didn't change the name of that specification. It continued
to be ISO C9[09] even after the adoption by ANSI. The title page of your
$18 version bought from ANSI must look approximately like this:

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 9899

Second edition [snip]
Processed and adopted by ASC the National Committee for
Information Technology Standards (NCITS) and approved by
ANSI as an American National Standard.

Date of ANSI Approval: 5/22/2000

Published by American National Standards Institute,
11 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036 [...]

Yes.

I don't know whether this makes it incorrect refer to C89 as "ANSI C".

It is the *only* C specification elaborated by ANSI and, therefore, the
only one deserving the informal name of "ANSI C". Also note that *all*
these names are informal, the formal ones looking as in the above quote:
ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E) or ANSI X3.159-1989.

I'm not sure what you mean by "elaborated by" in this context. C99 is
"approved by ANSI as an American National Standard".

One could argue that the phrase "ANSI C" therefore refers to ISO/IEC
9899:1999(E), though I understand that common usage uses the term
"ANSI C" for ANSI X3.159-1989.

Personally, I avoid the issue by referring only to "ISO C", and
specifying C90 or C99 as necessary.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Where it is equally undeserved.

Its my day for apologising. Earlier on I tripped over a coat stand, and one
of the coat-hanger bits stabbed a co-worker in the face, piercing his
cheek.... yech!

I don't know, or particularly care, whether the $18 includes a profit
margin or not. My guess is that it does.

Makes sense to include one. Otherwise how to fund the next round of
committees?

 

[Keith Thompson]

Its my day for apologising.

[...]

Cheerfully accepted.

 

[Dan Pop]

I thought ANSI officially adopted the ISO C90 specification when it
came out -- and also officially adopted the C99 specification as an
ANSI standard.

But this fact didn't change the name of that specification. It continued
to be ISO C9[09] even after the adoption by ANSI. The title page of your
$18 version bought from ANSI must look approximately like this:

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 9899

Second edition [snip]
Processed and adopted by ASC the National Committee for
Information Technology Standards (NCITS) and approved by
ANSI as an American National Standard.

Date of ANSI Approval: 5/22/2000

Published by American National Standards Institute,
11 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036 [...]

Yes.

I don't know whether this makes it incorrect refer to C89 as "ANSI C".

It is the *only* C specification elaborated by ANSI and, therefore, the
only one deserving the informal name of "ANSI C". Also note that *all*
these names are informal, the formal ones looking as in the above quote:
ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E) or ANSI X3.159-1989.

I'm not sure what you mean by "elaborated by" in this context.

"made by"

C99 is "approved by ANSI as an American National Standard".

But it was not *made* by ANSI, it was merely approved by ANSI. The
organisation that made the standard was ISO and ANSI merely approved ISO's
work for usage as an American National Standard.

Of course, I'm simplifying the things, but you get the idea. ANSI did
contribute to the elaboration of C99, but it was the collective work of
representants of national standardisation institutes of many countries,
grouped under the ISO umbrella. While C89 was the exclusive work of an
ANSI committee (X3-J11, IIRC).

One could argue that the phrase "ANSI C" therefore refers to ISO/IEC
9899:1999(E),

It doesn't make much sense to claim that "ANSI C" refers to a
specification whose official name doesn't start with "ANSI", does it?

though I understand that common usage uses the term
"ANSI C" for ANSI X3.159-1989.

For reasons that should be obvious by now.

Personally, I avoid the issue by referring only to "ISO C", and
specifying C90 or C99 as necessary.

C89, C90 and C99 avoid any possibility of confusion, especially when
quoting chapter and verses (C89 and C90 differ exclusively on chapter and
verse numbering issues).

Dan

 

[Keith Thompson]

It doesn't make much sense to claim that "ANSI C" refers to a
specification whose official name doesn't start with "ANSI", does it?

Nor does it make much sense to claim that "ANSI C" refers to a
specification that ANSI itself says is superseded by a later
specification. I conclude that it doesn't make much sense to refer to
"ANSI C", except historically.

C89, C90 and C99 avoid any possibility of confusion, especially when
quoting chapter and verses (C89 and C90 differ exclusively on chapter and
verse numbering issues).

Agreed. Now that I think about it, I don't think I actually use the
phrase "ISO C" very often; I generally refer to C89, C90, or C99.

 

[Dan Pop]

(e-mail address removed) (Dan Pop) writes:
[...]

It doesn't make much sense to claim that "ANSI C" refers to a
specification whose official name doesn't start with "ANSI", does it?

Nor does it make much sense to claim that "ANSI C" refers to a
specification that ANSI itself says is superseded by a later
specification. I conclude that it doesn't make much sense to refer to
"ANSI C", except historically.

In theory, yes. In practice, however, ANSI C is far more alive and
kicking than the specification that has *officially* superseded it.

Agreed. Now that I think about it, I don't think I actually use the
phrase "ISO C" very often; I generally refer to C89, C90, or C99.

"ISO C" was useful before C99, as it meant: "the C standard with ISO
numbering" (C90), while "ANSI C" meant "the C standard with ANSI
numbering" (C89). Now, "ISO C" means different things to different
people (and each camp has good arguments for its position), so it's
better avoided.

Dan