Long-term maintenance of the ABI

[Mark Mitchell]

Presently, the ABI is being maintained in a somewhat haphazard manner.  In
particular, when someone finds something that doesn't look right, there's
a reasonable probability that I might fix it. :-)

This doesn't seem right, from two angles:

(1) There's no reason I should have arbitrary power.

(2) There's no reason I should have arbitrary responsibility.

:-)

I'd like to see some sort of neutral, multi-company forum to maintain
the ABI.  It would be nice if the rules for how changes get made were
clarified a bit, and if the various interested parties were willing to
commit to have a representative who would vote on changes.

I've talked to Intel about this situation, and they're interested in
helping, in several ways, including providing a technical writer to
help clean up the specification.  (It would be nice to formalize the
specification somewhat; however, it will be hard to do this without
accidentally changing it.)

Are people at other companies represented by people on this list
interested in moving in this direction?

-- 
Mark Mitchell                mark at codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC            http://www.codesourcery.com