Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Just_Curious]

All,

Thinking about role of Standards Committee in my favorite
language (Fortran) I decided to hear advice from folks in other
languages first.

What is the role of Your Language committee?

Does Your Committees expand horizons and enlightens compiler
developers with their recommendations? Or opposite,
not being creative, they are working like brake for language
development and experimenting and eventually are bad for
users?

Do you think that compiler vendors and users themselves are not
able to maintain backward compatibility without such committees?

And in general, do you see some analogies between Language Committees
and other regulations in other areas of real life, on the net etc ?

I think these questions are of common interest.
This is post in several language compiler newsgroups,
hence please mention your language unless you specially
don't want this. You may find responds on other languages
searching Deja with subject as above.

cheers