[Stds-754] motion for Aug: Change Software-Only Conformance Requirement

[Ronald Smith <rmsmith1@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan, I'd like to make the following motion at the August meeting.

Regards, Ron Smith

(The page numbers and text used in this motion are from
DRAFT Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic P754 Draft 1.1.2,
dated July 28, 2006)
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Motion: Change Software-Only Conformance Requirement

Page 9, section 1.1, "Scope"

Current text of the second paragraph:

It is intended that an implementation of a floating-point system
conforming to this standard can be realized entirely in software,
entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware.
It is the environment the user of the system sees that conforms or fails
to conform to this standard.  Hardware components that require software
support to conform shall not be said to conform apart from such
software.

Add the following sentence:

In the same way, software components requiring system facilities to
conform shall not be said to conform apart from such facilities; this
might include, for example, hardware, operating-system services,
libraries, and other software.


Rationale

Software cannot run without hardware.  We cannot imagine software that
will actually run on every computer in the world.  Even the software I buy
in the store lists system requirements.  Software which claims to run
without any restrictions or hardware dependencies should not be trusted.

An alternative would be to remove the statement "can be realized
entirely in software" as all this does is tempt some software product to
advertise that it conforms but without listing all the assumptions that
went into that conclusion.  I know several program products that when I
complain, the answer is, "that is a hardware problem, not a software
problem."  I do not know of any software products that claim to work
regardless of the hardware.