IEEE 754 status and availability of approved draft
2008/7/24 Mike Cowlishaw <MFC at uk.ibm.com>:
It is expected that anyone who does receive a copy will handle it professionally, not distribute it further, etc.
What is the expectation with respect to downstream work based on the spec? If we start adding test cases or fixing bugs in our codebase in response to the spec, we'd almost certainly be disclosing elements of the specification (if not the actual text). Is the "professional" handling intended to be more like copyright (the actual textual expression) or patent/trade secret (the concepts)?
Might be that Mozilla and others with public codebases need to just wait until it's really public, which is fine; just don't want us to end up on the wrong side of it inadvertently by misinterpreting your "etc." :)
Mike
I was on an IEEE-SA telecon yesterday where the availability of the approved IEEE 754 final ballot draft was discussed (ISO WG14 and WG21 needing this in short term). In summary:
The final ballot draft of IEEE P754 Standard for Floating-point Arithmetic was approved in June 2008
IEEE SA is keen for other standards bodies to have access to this draft pending the publication of the standard (currently expected 29 August 2008 -- there will be very minor editorial changes, new front-matter, etc., but no technical changes permitted).
Therefore I can let ECMA TC49 participants have a copy of draft 1.9.0. What is the best way to effect that?
It is expected that anyone who does receive a copy will handle it professionally, not distribute it further, etc.
Mike
Mike Cowlishaw, IBM Fellow IBM UK (MP8), PO Box 31, Birmingham Road, Warwick, CV34 5JL mailto:mfc at uk.ibm.com -- www2.hursley.ibm.com/mfcsumm.html
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