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Herb Sutter's Paper Argues Stroustrup's Objection Decided the C++26 Ballot and Differs Across Archived Captures; The Register Reports the Vote Count

A paper by Herb Sutter argues Bjarne Stroustrup's objection was the decisive issue in the failed C++26 ISO ballot; its text differs between archived copies, and The Register reports 13 votes for, 9 against and 12 abstentions.

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Editor's Note ·

Clarification:
The article says "The Internet Archive's index lists other captures in between; the Herald did not compare each of them." The Internet Archive's index records four distinct versions of the PDF between 8 and 11 November (captures from 8 November 22:02 UTC, 9 November 11:59 UTC, 9 November 19:25 UTC and 11 November 19:32 UTC). The 9 November 11:59 UTC capture already reads "steward body" and no longer contains "hence Bjarne’s dissent was the pivotal factor" or the "if even one had voted in favor" sentence, so the paper changed in several steps and several of the listed differences were already in place on 9 November.
Clarification:
The article reports The Register's counts of 13 votes for, 9 against and 12 abstentions. The ISO ballot is not public, and neither the paper nor Mateusz Pusz's post gives a tally, so the Herald found no primary record of these counts; they rest on The Register alone. Pusz writes that ISO's full ballot report is due by mid-January 2027 at the latest.

Overview

A paper by Herb Sutter, addressed to WG21 (the ISO C++ committee), argues that the decisive issue behind the C++26 draft not being approved in its ISO ballot was that C++‘s creator, Bjarne Stroustrup, disagreed with the committee’s consensus on contracts and that national bodies gave his view more weight. The document, P4454R0, carries the date 2026-10-31. The Register reported on 13 November 2026 that the ballot drew 13 votes in favor, 9 against and 12 abstentions. The Machine Herald’s earlier report on the failed ballot carried no tally. The paper’s text also differs between two archived copies, from 8 and 11 November.

What the Paper Argues

In the current version of P4454R0, Sutter writes: “The decisive issue that caused the DIS to not be approved is that the language’s creator strongly disagreed with the consensus of its steward body responsible for its maintenance and evolution.” The paper says it “doesn’t try to relitigate who’s right about contracts as a feature or right about the NB Disapprove campaign,” and that it neither proposes that Stroustrup become a BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) nor aims to blame anyone.

Sutter writes that national bodies weighed the committee’s consensus against Stroustrup’s dissent and decided the dissent outweighed it. He says that, to his knowledge, five people actively campaigned among other national bodies against the draft. He also writes that over half of the national bodies that voted Disapprove “had never participated in WG21 at all and/or never before expressed any concern about contracts in C++26” before being lobbied with messages citing Stroustrup’s opposition, and adds: “This was decisive.” These are Sutter’s statements. The paper gives Stroustrup’s own summary of his view, attributed to “personal communication” and to his paper P4334R0, as describing a design that is “fundamentally flawed.”

The Six Options

Section 4.2 of the paper lists options for C++26 and says that “All of them except Option A allow work on C++26 to still be technically completed in 2026 at Búzios.” In summary, they are:

  • A. Do not publish C++26 through ISO and proceed with C++29.
  • B. Remove contracts from the draft and retry the ballot; the paper lists as its precondition that Stroustrup agrees to recommend approval in that form.
  • C. Re-ballot the post-Croydon draft with a contracts rationale annex and a campaign to inform national bodies that voted Disapprove.
  • D. Ballot the post-Búzios draft as a new draft international standard.
  • E. Let national bodies that want C++26 adopt it as a national standard.
  • F. Option E plus investigating continued work within ANSI/INCITS or the Linux Foundation.

An editor’s note says Stroustrup “stated here, when reviewing this paper, that Option B is the outcome he most wants to see, ideally in a new DIS draft produced within 6 weeks so that the technical work still qualifies as being considered completed in 2026.” That is Sutter’s report of Stroustrup’s statement. Mateusz Pusz, who writes that he is a member of the Polish national body and prefers to keep contracts, wrote on 25 October that the ISO/IEC SC22 chair chooses among three courses after a failed ballot, with WG21’s part being to “recommend a course.”

The Register’s Report

The Register, in an article by Joab Jackson published at 07:31 UTC on 13 November, reports that “The ballot saw 13 votes cast in favor, 9 against, and 12 abstentions, failing to meet the ISO requirement of having no more than 25 percent negative votes.” It says contracts “was the major sticking point for those voting nay.” It cites Andreas Fertig, whom it describes as a member of the C++ standardization committee, as writing in a blog post that by voting no “an established system, one based primarily on trust and respectful collaboration, has been shaken.” Harry Bott, whom it identifies as CEO of the C++ Alliance, told it by email: “The draft being sent back isn’t a failure of the process—it’s the process working as intended.”

The Register does not mention Sutter’s paper and does not say where the vote counts come from. Pusz wrote on 25 October that ISO policy allows sharing “the overall outcome of a vote” but “not how any national body voted,” and that the WG21 meeting in Búzios, Brazil, runs “from 16 to 21 November 2026.”

The Paper Differs Between Archived Copies

The Herald compared the live PDF as retrieved on 14 November, which is byte-identical to the Internet Archive’s capture of 2026-11-11 19:32 UTC, with the capture of 2026-11-08 22:02 UTC. Both show “Date: 2026-10-31” and the number P4454 R0. These differences are the Herald’s own comparison:

  • The 8 November title reads “When a language’s creator and its owners strongly disagree”; the 11 November title reads “When a language’s creator and its steward body strongly disagree.”
  • The 8 November tl;dr paragraph reads “The core decisive issue that caused the DIS to fail is that the language’s creator and its owners disagree.”
  • The 8 November capture includes the sentence “Of those additional NBs who voted Disapprove, if even one had voted in favor and one abstained, with all the others still against, the DIS would have passed.” It also includes the clause “hence Bjarne’s dissent was the pivotal factor.” Neither appears on 11 November, when the footnote instead says the DIS would have passed “Without those additional recruited Disapprove votes.”
  • The 8 November capture states that Sutter “privately reconfirmed with the key people in two NBs” that a proposal numbered P3911 would likely be enough for them to switch to Approve; that sentence is absent on 11 November.

The Internet Archive’s index lists other captures in between; the Herald did not compare each of them, and none of the cited sources says why the text changed.

What the Sources Do Not Settle

  • Whether the national bodies voted as Sutter describes: Pusz wrote that the national-body comments were not yet available, with the full report due by mid-January 2027 at the latest.
  • Where The Register’s counts come from.
  • Which course the SC22 chair will choose, and what WG21 recommends at the Búzios meeting.
  • Stroustrup’s own response to the paper; none of the cited sources reports one.
  • Why the paper’s wording changed.