On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 12:01 AM, <ok@cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
What counts for the development and growth of a programming
language is the community behind it, and Haskell is blessed
with some really amazing people.

Most of those amazing people care more about keeping the language growing than about rigid adherence to a standard or complete backwards compatibility.
 
However, it remains true that some companies expect to
outlive their suppliers, and that the existence of a
standard gives them some confidence that avoiding things
outside it will reduce their risks.  That's all.

Since all Haskell implementations of any significance, historical or otherwise, are open source, this is a red herring. If the GHC project dies, anyone relying on GHC is free to continue development themselves.