Guido van Rossum wrote:
Also, the .NET CLR is standardized at ECMA so we could (at least in theory!) go to the meetings and try to influence version 2.
Notice the addition "in theory". In practice, this is BS.
It depends on the rules and politics of each particular standards group. It is fundamentally a social activity. It also depends how much effort you are willing to put into promoting your cause. Sam Ruby is chair of the ECMA CLI group. He is a big scripting language fan.
http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/tc39/
Also note the presence of Mike Cowlishaw of REXX fame and Dave Raggett of the W3C.
Working within a standards body is a gamble. It can pay off big or it can completely fail. We might find Microsoft our strongest ally -- they have always been interested in having the scripting languages work well on their platforms. They would hate to give programmers to have an excuse to stick to Unix or the JVM.
So it boils down to us vs. MS. Guess who wins whenever there's a disagreement. I still maintain that it's a waste of our time.
I don't personally know enough about this particular circumstance to know whether there is any possibility of significantly influencing version 2 or not. Maybe the gamble isn't worth the effort. But I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
Well, your boss has a pact with MS, so AS might pull it off. :-) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)