The Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC) started in 1986 (under the name “Structure in Complexity Theory Conference”) as an independent conference, with start-up funds from an NSF grant. Liability and insurance were a major concern at the time. For the first meeting the founders obtained backup from Iowa State University. For the second meeting they approached IEEE. The IEEE Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF) became the official sponsor of the conference and the publisher of its proceedings, and continues to be so to date. The choice of IEEE (as opposed to ACM, for example) was largely because of the contacts the founders had.
In the beginning the working relation with IEEE was very good but there has been a fair amount of disgruntlement over the last 15 years. Several local organizers complained about the inflexibility and unresponsiveness of the IEEE bureaucracy, to the extent that they would not want to work with IEEE again. To a lesser degree some PC chairs were frustrated with the proceedings editors. Some people also feel that ACM would be a better home for the conference, and that ACM treats its Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) better than IEEE treats TCMF. Changing the affiliation with IEEE was suggested a number of times in the past but was never seriously considered.
In recent years financial and open access issues came to the forefront. We first present data and details about those aspects.
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