On 20-Jul-2005, David Barton
I can contribute some experience from commercial standardization efforts. ANSI, IEEE, and ISO standards require re-ballotting every five years, otherwise the standards lapse. Reballotting may or may not be accompanied by changes in the standard; for a standard as complex as a language, new versions at least every five years seems to be fairly common with "newer" standards [...] Five years is what the general industry seems to have settled on as a good average, but it may or may not apply here; the circumstances are different.
ANSI/ISO programming language standards typically undergo major updates every 10 years or so: Fortran 66, 77, 95, 2003; COBOL 68, 74, 85, 2002; Ada 83, 95, 2005; C 89, 99; C++ 98, 200x (for some x >= 5).
(ANSI C has not changed in newer standardization ballots as far as I know).
A major new update to the ANSI/ISO C standard was issued in 1999. -- Fergus J. Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit Galois Connections, Inc. | of excellence is a lethal habit" Phone: +1 503 626 6616 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.