ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2114

                   Convener's report from SC22 meeting,
                  Vienna, Austria, 13-14 September 2016

                      John Reid, 18 September 2016

1. Revision of the standard

Because we are not changing the scope or editor, an SC22 resolution is
sufficient to start the revision of the standard. This was passed and the 
revision was formally registered as a new work item by ISO on September 15. 
I told them of our proposed schedule (see N2106), but the resolution simply
says 36 months to allow a bit of leeway (which I hope we will not need). 

2. Corrigenda

The present ISO policy is for there to be at most two corrigenda to a 
standard and that the standard be at most three years old. We nearly 
lost corrigendum 4 because of this. Because we have started a revision, it
will be a few years before this hits us again, but it is likely to do so.
Other conveners are more concerned and the resolution below was passed.
The SC22 chair, Rex Jaeschke, will pursue this with JTC1. 

3. Linux Standard

There was again considerable discussion of SC22's Linux Standard 
Implementation Study Group which was established to work with the Linux 
Foundation re updating the ISO standard to bring it into line with the 
publicly available specification. At last, there is some interest from
the Linux Foundation, so it was decided to renew the Study Group. 

4. Part 2 of the standard

Part 2 (Varying length character strings) came up for (5-year) periodic 
review and was renewed. Let's discuss whether we should keep this at our 
meeting next year.

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Resolution 16-08: Request to Consider Modification of the JTC 1 Supplement 
on Technical Corrigenda

JTC 1/SC 22 notes that ISO policy limits the number of technical corrigenda 
to two, and that ISO/IEC Directives Part 1 specifies a limit of three years 
after which no technical corrigenda are allowed. These limitations pose general 
problems for standards maintenance. They pose additional problems for large 
standards (hundreds to thousands of pages) and those that have a long useful 
lifetime, such as those created and maintained by JTC 1/SC 22.

In the general case, a technical corrigendum is the only way to make a 
retroactive change to an existing edition of the standard. This allows 
business contracts pointing to a specific edition of a standard to receive 
the benefits of corrections and clarifications. As a result, the technical
corrigendum is a necessary component for establishing and maintaining 
nondiscriminatory trade practices. Limiting the number and timing of 
technical corrigenda can have serious implications to users of JTC 1 
standards.

Revising a 1,000-page standard is not a simple undertaking regarding time 
and resources, and is an error-prone process. Therefore, JTC 1/SC 22 prefers 
to not revise lengthy standards more frequently than technically necessary.
JTC 1/SC 22 agrees that technical corrigenda are only for corrections and 
resolutions of ambiguities, and not for adding new features. JTC 1/SC 22 
believes that limiting the number and timing of technical corrigenda is 
neither a valid method nor an effective method for enforcing this policy, 
and imposes serious burdens on the maintenance of large standards.

Consequently, JTC 1/SC 22 urges JTC 1 to work with ISO to remove the 
limitation on timing and number of technical corrigenda.

The JTC 1/SC 22 Chair is requested to present this resolution to the 
November 2016 JTC 1 Plenary.