Who is on the standardization committee?

The committee consists of a large number of people (about 200) out of whom about 100 turn up at the week-long meetings two or three times a year. In addition there are national standards groups and meetings in several countries. Most members contribute either by attending meetings, by taking part in email discussions, or by submitting papers for committee consideration. Most members have friends and colleagues who help them. From day #1, the committee has had members from many countries and at every meeting people from half a dozen to a dozen countries attend. The final votes are done by about 20 national standards bodies. Thus, the ISO C++ standardization is a fairly massive effort, not a small coherent group of people working to create a perfect language for “people just like themselves.” The standard is what this group of volunteers can agree on as being the best they can produce that all can live with.

Naturally, many (but not all) of these volunteers have day jobs focused on C++: They include compiler writers, tool builders, library writers, application builders, researchers, book authors, consultants, test-suite builders, and more.

Here is a very-partial list of some major organizations involved: Adobe, Apple, Boost, Bloomberg, EDG, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat.

Here is a short list of names of members who you may have encountered in the literature or on the web: Dave Abrahams, Matt Austern, Pete Becker, Hans Boehm, Steve Clamage, Lawrence Crowl, Beman Dawes, Francis Glassborow, Doug Gregor, Pablo Halpern, Howard Hinnant, Jaakko Jarvi, John Lakos, Alisdair Meredith, Jens Maurer, Jason Merrill, Sean Parent, P.J. Plauger, Tom Plum, Gabriel Dos Reis, Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, David Vandevoorde, Michael Wong. Apologies to the 200+ current and past members that we couldn’t list. Also, please note the author lists on the various papers: a standard is written by (many) individuals, not by an anonymous committee.

You can get a better impression of the breath and depth of expertise involved by examining the authors listed in the WG21 papers archive, but please remember there are major contributors to the standards effort who do not write a lot.