jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman) (02/07/91)
Submitted-by: jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman)
Report on IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC meeting 16-18 October 1990 in
Seattle, WA.
1 November 1990
John S. Quarterman <jsq@tic.com>
Texas Internet Consulting
IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC
1. What's an SEC?
The IEEE Computer Society (IEEE/CS) has been delegated authority by
IEEE for standards involving operating systems, and IEEE was in turn
delegated authority by ANSI, which is the U.S. national standards body
that holds formal representation to international standards bodies
such as ISO.
Committees and Sponsors
Every IEEE/CS standards committee must have a sponsoring body. All of
the committees that met in Seattle in October are sponsored by the
IEEE/CS Technical Committee on Operating Systems, Standards
Subcommittee (IEEE/CS TCOS-SS). They (IEEE 1003.x, 1201.y, 1224,
1237, and 1238) are thus sometimes refered to as the TCOS standards
committees. These include the POSIX committees, but the term POSIX
properly applies only to the IEEE 1003.x committees, and to the
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 committee that deals with the same topics and
drafts in their 9945 documents, but not to the other TCOS committees.
If I've counted right, TCOS now sponsors 30 projects in 20 standards
committees.
SEC Composition
Yes, but what's an SEC? The Sponsor Executive Committee of IEEE/CS
TCOS-SS, whose purpose is to oversee standards projects sponsored by
TCOS. The SEC is composed of the chairs of all the TCOS commitees,
plus officers, e.g., Jim Isaak, Chair, Shane McCarron, Secretary, and
various Vice-Chairs for specific subjects, many of whom are chairs of
subcommittees:
__________
* UNIXTM is a Registered Trademark of UNIX System Laboratories in
the United States and other countries.
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Vice-Chair Area
__________________________________
Hal Jespersen Technical Editing
Ralph Barker Coordination
Robert Bismuth Interpretations
Dave Dodge Logistics
Lorraine Kevra Balloting
There are also steering committees for certain areas:
____________________________________
Roger Martin Conformance Testing
Tim Baker Distribution Services
All the Institutional Representatives (IRs) to TCOS are also SEC
members. The IRs at the time of the October SEC meeting were:
IR Organization
_______________________________________________
Ralph Barker UniForum
John S. Quarterman USENIX
Martin Kirk X/Open
Fritz Shultz Open Software Foundation
Shane McCarron UNIX International
? SHARE (the IBM user group)
? Free Software Foundation
? ? (the Navy users group)
The last two were approved at the October meeting. There are two
functions of an IR, which can be split: participating in SEC meetings
and activities; and participating in ballotting groups, where the IRs
ballot for their institutions, unlike all other ballotters, who vote
as individuals.
SEC Functions
The SEC decides its own membership, either by electing officers, or by
accepting new IRs, or by approving Project Authorization Requests
(PARs) for new commitees. Chairs of standards committees are
appointed by TCOS-SS (i.e., normally by the TCOS-SS Chair, who is also
the SEC Chair) and approved by their working groups. In practice such
a chair is normally named in the PAR that the SEC accepts to establish
the committee. The SEC can also abolish committees (see below), and
it can establish rules for its own activities, such as for acceptance
of PARs (see below).
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2. Language Independence
IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988, the original POSIX standard, is written in
terms of the C Programming Language. It makes some attempt to address
the issue of multiple programming languages by distinguishing between
Common Usage C and Standard C, and by definitions of conformance and
compliance that are not tied to a specific language (you can have a
POSIX system that doesn't have any language translator at all).
Nonetheless, all the interfaces of 1003.1 are defined in terms of C.
WG15 and LI
WG15 has made it clear all along that language-specific standards are
not acceptable to the ISO process. The POSIX committees have accepted
that judgment in principle, but not a single POSIX committee has
produced a language independent (LI) document. This is a problem not
only for those committees such as 1003.2 and 1003.4 that are working
on base documents, but also for those that are working on language
bindings, such as the 1003.5 Ada committee and the 1003.9 Fortran
committees. Should the language binding committees attempt to produce
``thin'' documents that just refer to a language independent base
document, or should they produce ``thick'' documents that specify the
language-independent interface as well as the language binding? It's
hard to make thin language documents without existing language-
independent base documents. This is a good reason for LI, independent
of what WG15 wants. In fairness, it must be pointed out that at least
1003.4 and 1003.1 are already doing substantial work on language
independence.
The LI issue came to a head at the June 1990 Paris WG15 meeting, which
was the most recent one before the Seattle TCOS committee meetings.
As related in Dominic Dunlop's ISO Monitor report, WG15 refused to
accept the IEEE 1003.4 document (and several others) for consideration
as an International Standard because it was not language independent.
Since 1003.4, in particular, is already balloting, this left the SEC
between a rock (WG15) and a hard place (getting its own committees to
implement LI). See also Paul Rabin's October posting on this subject.
LI Resolutions
An SEC subcommittee to examine the LI issue reported back a motion to
require all TCOS committees to incorporate an LI part before ballot
approval. (There were actually several overlapping and sequential
motions, each of which was savagely amended by the SEC, but let's keep
such gore out of this report.) The LI notion was not happily received
by some of the SEC members, particularly not by 1003.2.
Various people queried whether such a requirement could be established
without a separate PAR for each affected committee, in order to
confirm an LI document for each one. It was pointed out that the
resolution specified an LI part, not a separate document, and thus no
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new PARs would be needed. It was questioned whether such a
requirement could be imposed on a standard already in balloting, since
changes to such documents can only be made in response to the
balloting process. The SEC Chair pointed out that balloting changes
could be made not only in response to objections, but also to
balloting comments, and the resolution would appear as a comment. (I
don't believe anyone mentioned it specifically, but a document
approved by its balloting group still has to be approved by the
IEEE/CS Standards Activities Board, which is unlikely to approve
anything not recommended by the IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC.) It was pointed
out that whenever new conditions had been imposed on a standard in
balloting (such as for test assertions), balloting had been delayed up
to a year. Several chairs made it clear that their committees didn't
want to do this work, or at least didn't want it imposed on them by
the SEC in this manner, especially considering that the gist of the
new proposal had already been accepted by the SEC as a guideline in a
previous meeting.
An amendment was moved and seconded to make the LI rules applicable
only to those standards that start balloting after 18 October 1990
(the date of the meeting in process), thus excluding 1003.2 and
1003.4. This even though 1003.4 has apparently already done much of
the LI work, and 1003.2 is apparently working on it. The amendment
was passed, and the base motion was passed as amended.
But what about WG15?
There was, nonetheless, some confidence that WG15 might alter its
stand on the acceptance of, e.g., the 1003.4 document. The SEC also
approved a request from the U.S. TAG to forward specific drafts of
five TCOS standards documents to WG15 when said drafts were available.
We'll know soon whether WG15 will accept any of them, since the next
WG15 meeting was the week after the TCOS meetings, and also in Seattle
(well, Orcas Island). Stay tuned for Dominic Dunlop's WG15 ISO
Monitor Report and Susanne Smith's U.S. TAG snitch report.
3. It's dead, Jim
The SEC did something that has never been done before in its history,
and perhaps never in the history of IEEE standards activities. It
abolished a standards committee.
Fragmentation and dissolution
Several meetings back, IEEE 1003.8 fragmented into several committees
to discuss specific subjects related to networking (excuse me:
Distribution Services; TCOS does operating system interfaces, not
networking). Some of these, such as the 1003.12 Protocol Independent
Interface (PII) committee and the current 1003.8 Transparent File
Access (TFA) committee, are addressing topics clearly related to
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operating system interfaces and prior art, e.g., XTI and sockets for
1003.12, and NFS, RFS, and AFS for 1003.8. Others include IEEE
1003.ns for Name Space/Directory Services (NS/DS) IEEE 1224 for
Message Handling Services, and IEEE 1238 for OSI Application
Portability Interfaces (OSI APIs). But IEEE 1237 was about remote
procedure call (RPC). It was working in an area already being
addressed by another standards committee, in this case, the ANSI X3
T3.5 RPC Rapporteur Group. 1237 was also sparsely attended, and chose
to meet with X3 T3.5 in the summer instead of with the other TCOS
committees in Danvers in July.
The 1237 committee proposed its own dissolution. Specifically, it
proposed that its chair, Ken Hobday, be thanked for his activities and
appointed SEC Institutional Representative to the Rapporteur Group.
The general idea drew little resistance, but there was a motion to
amend by tying the dissolution of 1237 to the acceptance of its work
by the X3 T3.5 RPC Rapporteur Group. When it was made clear (by
someone speaking for the 1237 chair, who was not present), that the
1237 members had no intention of meeting again, regardless of what the
SEC did, the motion to amend failed and the original motion passed.
The Bones of the SEC
``It's dead, Jim,'' remarked Parliamentarian Jason Zions to Chair Jim
Isaak, and to the great satisfaction of all concerned.
4. Robert's Rules
When the number of TCOS committees grew to its current double dozen,
SEC meetings became rather unweildy. They seemed to last for days.
Er, meetings actually do last for days (usually Tuesday and Thursday
morning or evening), but a single day seemed like several.
Fortunately, a parliamentarian came grunting out of Silicon Valley
clutching a copy of Robert's Rules of Order. We do all appreciate
Jason Zions' efforts to organize the meetings, and they now only last
for days. We do get some interesting artifacts, though.
A motion was made on an important topic. Many thought that action
should be taken immediately, but others thought the time and the
motion weren't ripe. So a motion was made to postpone discussion
until January. Jason confirmed that postponement was debatable, so
the mover withdrew that motion and made a motion to table, which is
not debatable. Someone else made a motion to suspend the rule about
motions to table not being debatable. Just before the impending vote
on this third-level-deep motion, the Chair pointed out that its mover
wasn't a member of the SEC. Others pointed out that the mover of the
motion to table wasn't, either, because we had just abolished his
committee. The Chair opined that that action wasn't really effective
yet, because the IEEE Standards Board still had to confirm that
action. Nonetheless, the mover withdrew the motion. Two other people
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immediately made the same motions in the same order, the motion to
suspend the rules was approved, and debate ensued on the motion to
table.
The above parliamentary foofaraw only took about one minute. I think
such amusements are a small price to pay for much less contentious and
much faster meetings.
In case you were wondering, eventually the motion to table was voted
down and the original motion passed.
5. PAR Proliferation Prevention
In the last year, the SEC has approved more than a dozen PARs for new
committees or new documents. This sudden (the January 1990 SEC
meeting approved 11 PARs) doubling of TCOS standards activities has
led to widespread concern.
PAR Acceptance Criteria
In April in Utah, the SEC approved a set of nine criteria for PAR
acceptance. These criteria, any of which can be waived by the SEC,
range from a desire for widespread industry experience and a base
document to a request for a scope of work that fits within that of
TCOS-SS. This was a good first step proliferation prevention, and
several PARs were either not submitted or were rejected in Snowbird
because of the existence of the criteria. This has been reported on
in previous editorials and snitch reports, and the criteria themselves
have been posted to comp.std.unix.
Project Management Committee
The other half of the battle for committee curtailment was the
establishment of a standing committee to apply the criteria to PARs
before they reached the SEC, and to track the progress of committees
against the milestones in their PARs, so that non-functional
committees could be recommended for elimination. A detailed set of
guidelines (including the PAR acceptance criteria and a model for
their application) for such a Project Management Committee (PMC) was
reported out of an ad hoc committee as a motion, which was passed
unanimously. The SEC Chair announced the opening of nominations for a
Chair, Secretary, and Project Editor for the PMC, to be confirmed in
January.
Although the movement to curtail proliferation of committees was
actually started by the Institutional Representatives back in March,
and though the ad hoc committee that wrote the PMC Guidelines
originally intended to require a balance of representation in the PMC
between IRs and other members, no such rule was incorporated in the
final document. This was not seen as a problem by the IRs, since the
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PMC cannot make any actual decisions regarding PARs. The PMC only
recommends, and cannot even prevent a PAR from coming before the SEC.
The SEC is the group that must decide on PAR acceptance, and all the
IRs are members of the SEC.
We can hope that the existence of the PMC will not only rationalize
the creation and abolition of standards committees, but will also
shorten SEC meetings....
6. Fees
The Logistics Subcommittee, chaired by Dave Dodge, returned a report
advising the raising of fees for meeting attendance. Traditionally,
meeting fees helped pay for meeting rooms and related logistics like
copying machines. (There is a separate fee schedule for committee
mailings.) A corporate host was sought for each meeting. The host
(e.g., Digital for the Seattle meeting) sponsored lunches four of five
weekdays and coffee service for breaks. This wasn't a big deal when
there were a few committees and maybe a hundred attendees. But with
400 attendees these days, hosting a meeting can run up to $55,000, and
all the host gets is name recognition. No hosts had been found for
any meeting after Seattle. So the logistics committee recommended and
the SEC approved raising the fees across the board, and giving people
the option of buying into the lunch plan or not. This is yet another
indication of the extent of current standards activities, and of their
effects on the industry.
Judy's birthday present
Various arguments from the logistics committee meeting were reported,
such as that eliminating coffee might help. The SEC Chair noted that
that wouldn't work, since that was how hotels made money, and they
wouldn't like that. The USENIX IR remarked that with competent
management, such as Dave Dodge and meeting organizer Judy Williams,
there was no need for micromanagement by the SEC at this level. This
was apparently the first time anyone had complimented Ms. Williams in
an SEC meeting. She organizes the meetings very well, evidently so
well that most people don't notice.
Computer room
One thing the logistics committee could do better would be giving
direction to sponsors of the computer room (such sponsors are still
sought, separately from the issue of meeting hosts). The computer
room in Seattle had no UUCP or Internet access (although it did have
half a dozen workstations on a network and a laser printer), and the
single modem was only 2400bps and not Hayes compatible. People were
scrounging mail access from local residents. Some ideas have been
floated on how to do this better in New Orleans.
1 November 1990 IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC
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7. TIMS gets new PEP from the Spanish Inquisition
The POSIX Platform Environment Profile (PEP) draft document was the
base document for a PAR on something that had been submitted at the
July SEC meeting in Danvers, Mass., as a TIMS (Traditional Interactive
Multiuser System) PAR. The PEP PAR was submitted by TCOS-SS Chair Jim
Isaak, with proposed working group chair Donn Terry.
Donn Terry is the current chair of IEEE 1003.1, and all the other
officers of that committee were also proposed to serve for the new
PAR. This is a good example of a PAR that doesn't create a new
committee, rather, it permits an existing committee to produce a new
document. (Another good example was the 1003.15 Batch Processing PAR,
which is being handled by the 1003.10 Supercomputing committee, and
which was, incidentally, approved in Utah in April after the PAR
acceptance criteria were approved by the SEC.)
The PEP PAR says its scope is to ``Establish an [sic] Platform
Environment Profile based on the ISO 9945 (IEEE 1003 POSIX) work and
related standards which describes a simple foundation for an
interactive, multiuser application platform.'' In other words, it's
YAP (Yet Another Profile). It fits between more or less between the
IEEE 1003.0 POSIX Guide, which is a framework or model for writing
profiles, and the NIST Application Portability Profile (APP), which is
a list of standards that can be used together. PEP is intended to
show how to use standards to specify something that looks like a
traditional UNIX system. Unlike 1003.0, it's not closely limited to
the TCOS standards, and the PAR specifically mentions NIST FIPS,
X/Open's work, and 9945-1 and 9945-2, as well as alluding to TCOS
POSIX work like 1003.4. It even mentions the Houston 30 (an industry
group of users of standards) as a party that wants this work. It's
called a platform profile because it can be used as a base for the
other profile efforts.
This was not an especially controversial PAR (except for logistical
issues such as finding enough people to attend 1003.1 meetings to do
the work, especially considering that 1003.1 is already mired in LI
work). It appeared likely to sail through to approval. Until someone
asked to see the answers to the PAR acceptance criteria. Oops.
Apparently the proposers had not prepared any, or had only prepared
them for the previous TIMS PAR, or had not distributed them. This
lack almost led to the PEP PAR being tabled. Instead, the SEC
convened its version of the Spanish Inquisition: Donn Terry
volunteered (at the instigation of the USENIX IR) to anwser the PAR
criteria orally and in real time, and the whole SEC volunteered to
quiz him on them. Evidently his answers satisfied enough members,
since the motion to table was defeated and the PEP PAR was approved
(despite a complaint from the floor that the SEC's own rules about PAR
acceptance, as just adopted in the PMC Guidelines, had not been
followed).
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The astute reader will have noticed that the Spanish Inquisition was
held while an undebatable motion to table was on the floor. How could
this be? See above under Robert's Rules....
8. USENIX Participation
At the Tuesday meeting, the USENIX IR asked for Weirdnix submissions
(for the best legal misinterpretation of 1003.1 or 1003.2) to be sent
to Jeff Haemer <jsh@ico.isc.com>.
The IR then read the main points from the announcement previously
posted on comp.std.unix about the USENIX Board of Directors decisions
at their September meeting about standards funding: that the ISO
Monitor Project was continued (contingent on EUUG support); $15K was
voted to continue the snitch reports; but no funds were voted for any
other USENIX standards activities, such as a USENIX Institutional
Representative (including, among other things, USENIX accreditation to
the SEC). The USENIX Board will entertain new proposals at their
January meeting. The previous funding expires approximately at the
end of October 1990.
At the Thursday SEC meeting, an ad hoc group of SEC members (not
including the USENIX IR) proposed a resolution to be sent by the SEC
Chair to the USENIX President and Board of Directors. The SEC
approved the resolution without objection, and the Chair thanked them
for their direction.
1 November 1990 IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC
Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 110