Re: Notes of Study Group Meeting, March 27, 2000

Subject: Re: Notes of Study Group Meeting, March 27, 2000
From: Peter J. Ashenden (petera@cs.adelaide.edu.au)
Date: Mon Mar 27 2000 - 18:13:31 PST

Wolfgang,

Thanks for circulating the notes.
>
> The discussion arose, how to interpret these results. Kamal pointed out,
> that according to British and Australien election votes, the candidate with
> the highest number in votes wins.

Sorry I can't speak for the British system, but we use a preferential
system here. Each voter expresses first, second, third, etc
preferences. We initially count first preferences. If no candidate
gets more than 50%, the votes whose first preference went to the lowest
polling candidate are redistributed according to the voters' second
preferences. If still no candidate is more than 50%, the votes of the
next lowest candidates are redistributed according to their second
preferences. And so on. Eventually, one candidate will cross 50% after
some number of redistributions of preferences, and that candidate wins.
It may not be the candidate that has the largest number of first
preferences, but it is supposedly the one that is "most preferable" to
the greatest number of voters.

So looking at the votes cast, I would interpret them as follows. A
majority accept the panel recommendation that SUAVE be adopted in one
form or the other. Half of them prefer SUAVE alone, the other half
prefer SUAVE plus entity/architecture inheritance. The minority prefer
Objective VHDL, despite the panel's recommendation. Part of that
preference is due to the entity/architecture inheritance features of
Objective VHDL. So by adopting SUAVE plus entity/architure inheritance,
that aspect of the minority preference would be satisfied. Hence I
think adopting SUAVE plus entity/architure inheritance would be "most
preferable" to the greatest number of voters.

> Further it was stated that offering a
> third option was not according to the orginal intention of the selection
> procedure the group had decided on.

No, but the original procedure didn't allow for the kind of
recommendation that the review panel eventually made, namely that SUAVE
plus entity/erchitecture inheritance be adopted, or failing that, that
SUAVE alone be adopted. At the meeting with HDLCON, it ws decided that
the third alternative be added to the vote question, since that was the
panel's recommended alternative.

> However, in few of the limited attendance to the meeting and the
> implication of the decision, the group decided not to take a formal vote on
> the interpretation of the vote and on the next steps, but rather to open an
> e-mail discussion on this issue.

Ok. My $0.02 above. Also, we need to get the DASC membership info to
confirm that part of the vote. We are still waiting on the info from
"IEEE Heaven."

Cheers,

PA 

-- 
Dr. Peter J. Ashenden              Email: petera@cs.adelaide.edu.au
Dept. Computer Science                    peter.ashenden@acm.org
University of Adelaide                    peter.ashenden@computer.org
Adelaide, SA 5005                  Phone: +61 8 8303 4477
Australia                          Fax:   +61 8 8303 4366

WWW: http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/~petera  (includes PGP public key)

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