I forget what mpi-core is so I pruned it out. Feel free to forward
there if anyone feels it appropriate and/or necessary.
>Because some people don't like flags, this draft was rewritten for April (not
>by popular demand, nor by straw votes at the March meeting, but as a (useful)
>experiment by Bill S.)), so that multiple functions replaced functions with
>flags. Straw votes at the April meeting approved these functions, although
>not overwhelmingly. Now people are worried about having lots of functions
>again, and have proposed a major change to MPI_Spawn in order to bring the
>number down.
I sympathize with the general sentiment I sense here, that we hammer out
an issue, a small amount of time passes, and then the issue is raised again
and it seems like we are spinning our wheels.
>flags) to do so, so let's vote on those again, if people want to, although
>those votes were already held once. I don't object to having more votes on
In my opinion, the fact that many parts of current working draft have
garnered support by way of straw votes does not preclude or inhibit
reconsideration or replacement of those parts in light of new arguments
or better yet, new proposals. The votes only justify why these parts
exist in the current working draft and why we are not reading and
continuing to work on something else in their place.
>So it would both speed things up and promote getting things right to have the
>draft at the June meeting reflect the current state of the chapter, which the
>small changes that were directed by straw votes in April. The new,
>counter-proposal should be held in reserve to be brought into the discussion
>only if we decide we want to radically change the current semantics of
>MPI_Spawn.
My opinion is pretty strong on this matter. There is a complete
proposal on the table. I happen to support it, but even if it was
crazy, even if it got zero support on the relevant list, we should
provide the Forum with hard copies at the next meeting and we are
especially bound to hear the proposal and then vote, by the formal
means, to take it and continue working on it, or to chuck it.
Proposals are the means for getting things before the Forum, we must
vote on every one, even if our schedule is jeopardy, even if we have
poured a boat load of sweat into the current working draft.
Anything less and our merit of openness is in doubt.
-- Greg