A programming language must have a reference point, a standard, which is used to decide what is in the language and how it behaves. There are different ways to build and distribute this standard:
Independent committee In the past it was an ANSI committee, today it is an ISO committee. The committee, independent of vendors, defines the language and publishes the standard. Anyone can create an implementation of the standard; the committee often provides tests to verify compliance with the standard.
Benevolent dictator A single person decides what is in the language and what is not. He (it is usually a male) runs a team of people who develop the implementation and publish it. The implementation is usually open source. Tests are used by the development team to ensure compliance with the standard. There may be more than one implementation published; the development team may publish advance and legacy versions, and other individuals or companies may publish their own implementations.
Corporate closed source A corporation designs a language and builds and publishes it as a product. The language may change at any time to suit the needs of the corporation. Other entities can publish "clones" of the language but they do not have access to the source code.
Corporate open source A corporation designs a language, builds and publishes it as in the "closed source" model, and then provides the source code as open source. Other entities can use the source code. The language can still change to suit the needs of the corporation.
These four models cover almost all programming languages. Looking at some popular programming languages, the grouping is:
Independent committee: FORTRAN, COBOL, C, C++, SQL, Ada, JavaScript
Benevolent dictator: Forth, Pascal, AWK, Perl, Python, Ruby
Corporate closed source: APL, PL/I, Visual Basic, Delphi, VB.NET, SAS, Objective-C, Objective-C++
Corporate open source: Java, C#, Swift
Some languages change over time. For example, BASIC started as with the "benevolent dictator" model, but Microsoft's success changed the dominate form to "corporate closed source". Java started as "corporate closed source" and is shifting to "corporate open source".
What's interesting is that the languages governed by independent committee tend to have longer lives. Of the seven languages (Fortran, Cobol, C, C++, SQL, Ada, and JavaScript) all but Ada are in use today. (Yes, Ada may be in use somewhere, on some obscure legacy project, but that is true of just about every language. Ada is, for all intents and purposes, a dead language.)
Languages governed by a benevolent dictator fare less well. Python and Ruby enjoy success today, while Perl declines from its previous popularity. Forth, Pascal, and Awk are used rarely and I see no activity, no growth to those languages.
Corporate languages enjoy popularity ... as long as the corporation pushes them. APL and PL/I, developed by IBM, are in the "dead" list. Microsoft's Visual Basic is dead and VB.NET (purported to be a successor to Visual Basic) is languishing. Delphi is used only in legacy applications.
I expect that with Apple's introduction of Swift, Objective-C and Objective-C++ will drop to "dead" status. The Mac OS X platform was the only place they were used. The current index at tiobe.com confirms this drop.
What does all of this mean? For anyone developing a large, long-term project, the selection of a language is important. Committee-governed languages last longer than other languages.
Notice that Java is not a committee-governed language. It is managed by Oracle.
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