What is EAPLS

EAPLS is an association that wants to stimulate research in the area of programming languages and systems. The precise scope of the association has been established as is discussed below. EAPLS aims at making contributions in the following areas:

• Collect and disseminate information related to research that falls in its scope.
• Contribute to the organization of conferences in its scope. It also provides a mechanism for financial support (e.g. guaranteeing reservation fees) or legally carrying funds from one conference to its successor.
• Seek cooperation with related organizations like EATCS, EACSL, ACM SIGPLAN, ERCIM, Formal Methods Europe, EASST, etc.
• Raise funds (from EU, governments, industry) in order to sponsor scientific events.
• Initiate scientific events in new areas.
• Stimulate the exchange of ideas and cooperation between researchers.
• Stimulate the application of research results in industry.

A bit of history

The original idea to set up an organization to stimulate the area of programming languages and systems was originally suggested by Reinhard Wilhelm in 1992. Since then, intermittent discussions have taken place via the EAPLS mailing list, program committee meetings of various conferences and among the various ESPRIT and HCM consortia. The following two questions have dominated the discussions:

• Is it possible to achieve better coordination between the conferences and workshops in this area (e.g. ESOP, CC, PLILP, SAS, ...) and in related areas (e.g. TAPSOFT, ...).
• What should be the precise scope and tasks of an EAPLS-like organization?

Umbrella conferences

The question regarding the coordination of spring conferences was resolved once the umbrella conference European joint conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS) was set up. ETAPS provides a common framework for all spring conferences mentioned earlier. A similar initiative to provide a joint framework for autumn conferences has led to the result that in 1996 PLILP, ALP and SAS were co-located in Aachen.

Scope of EAPLS

During the month November 1995 the discussion regarding the scope and tasks of EAPLS has been be resolved by a voting procedure , whose results are reflected in the EAPLS Statutes .

Formal inauguration

The association has been formally inaugurated in Aachen on September 24, 1996 during a satellite event to the SAS/PLILP/ALP conferences. On October 24, 1996 the EAPLS Statutes were subsequently signed officially at the premises of Mr. M. Meijer (notary), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.