[AaronBallman]

> When deciding on standardized behavior for C operations or data representation that may favor some hardware over others [1], who argues the side of the various hardware vendors, if they have no members on the standardization committee?

The C committee has a number of implementation vendors on it (GCC, Clang, IBM, Intel, sdcc, etc) and these folks do a good job of speaking up about the hardware they have to support (and in some cases, they're also the hardware vendor). If needed, we will also research hardware from vendors who have no active representation on the committee, but this is usually for more broad changes like "can we require 2's complement?".

> Is it fair to assume that hardware-related decisions occur in an environment where members who are sponsored by vendors argue their employers case, rather an a neutral one?

In my experience, the committee members typically do a good job of differentiating between "this is my opinion" and "this is my employer's opinion" during discussions where that matters. However, at the end of the day, each committee member is there representing some constituency (whether it's themselves or their company) and votes their own conscience.

[BeeOnRope]

Thanks for your quick and honest answer.