jsh@usenix.org (07/31/90)
From: <jsh@usenix.org> An Update on UNIX*-Related Standards Activities July, 1990 USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee Jeffrey S. Haemer, Report Editor U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 Susanne Smith <sws@calvin.wa.com> reports on the June 1 meeting in Denver, Colorado: 1. Overview Before you ask, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 is ISO POSIX. The U.S. TAG is the United States Technical Advisory Group, which formulates the U.S. position on WG15 issues and chooses the U.S. delegation to WG15 meetings. The TAG usually meets in conjunction with the IEEE POSIX meetings. The June 1 meeting was a special meeting, held to complete the many unfinished tasks left from Snowbird and ready the instructions to the U.S. delegation before the June 11 WG15 meeting. 2. Two vacant positions Terry Dowling, vice-chair and security rapporteur, resigned after the New Orleans meeting in January. Currently there are no candidates for the vice-chair position. Donn Terry has been assuming the responsibilities in the interim. A rapporteur group is a group of technical experts that discusses specialized aspects of a particular standards effort. The specialized aspects usually have a broader scope than an individual standard and require coordination of effort between standards bodies. WG15 has three: internationalization, security, and conformance. The TAG currently has rapporteurs for internationalization (Donn Terry) and conformance (Roger Martin). John Hill and Al Weaver said that they would be able to cover the June 11 security meetings in Paris. __________ * UNIXTM is a Registered Trademark of UNIX System Laboratories in the United States and other countries. July, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 - 2 - 3. Some important decisions from Snowbird 3.1 Profile groups get help SC22 asked WG15 to develop a plan to help groups writing profiles. (A profile is an application-area-specific set of pointers to standards. For example, P1003.10 is developing a supercomputing profile.) Wearing his WG15-convener hat, Jim Isaak drafted and submitted a ``POSIX Harmonization Proposal'' -- a plan that gives profile groups a way to observe WG15 meetings and participate when their proposals are being considered. The plan lists the responsibilities of both the ``harmonization liaison'' and WG15. The TAG approved the plan with comments, including changing ``harmonization'' to ``coordination.'' [Editor: I think ``harmonization'' is ugly, but it does parallel the ``MUSIC'' acronym that's gaining ground in the UNIX, er, ``Open Systems'' arena.] 3.2 Speeding international approval SC22 has asked all working groups doing development work in national bodies (for example, WG15 and IEEE P1003) to find a way to synchronize their national and international efforts. Such synchronization will help eliminate delays between national-body approval and ISO approval; it will also insure that both national and international bodies use the same text and speed achieving a broad consensus by circulating them in both bodies simultaneously. Donn Terry, TAG chair, and Jim Isaak (him again?) shouldered the burden of developing the plan and submitted it at Snowbird. The meat of the proposal is the following synchronization process: - SC22 review and comment - IEEE balloting; document ready for broad comment - U.S. recommends CD registration be requested by WG15. (CD, Committee Document, is now used instead of DP Draft Proposal.) - CD comments fed to IEEE balloting; IEEE recommendations fed to CD process - IEEE final approval delayed until updated draft is suitable for DIS registration - DIS and ANSI approval run in parallel; substantive feedback from DIS ballot creates an IEEE PAR Final authority to approve or reject the plan rests with SC22 and the IEEE Computer Society Standards Activities Board, but the TAG voted ``No with binding comments,'' objecting to a few details. If the problems listed below are fixed, the vote will automatically change to July, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 - 3 - ``Yes.'' + Under the plan, TCOS/SEC documents, such as standards drafts and administrative status reports, would all be sent to WG15 and SC22 to encourage feedback before balloting. The plan would force TCOS working groups to use the JTC1 format for draft documents. Currently POSIX documents use a unique TCOS format, so the TAG objected to this requirement but added the comment that the format should be one approved by the ITTF (Information Technology Task Force, formerly, the ``Central Secretariat''). + The TAG also objected to the requirement that TCOS meet outside of the U.S. mainland every 12 to 18 months to encourage international participation. It did not object to meeting outside the U.S., but thought the requirement did not belong in the plan. 4. Decisions made in this meeting 4.1 Formatting nits still block ISO UNIX The 9945-1 document (the ISO version of 1003.1) still has problems. WG15 recommended registering it as an International Standard (IS), but is now stuck in a loop: ISO demands a format change, the IEEE makes the change, then ISO finds a new formatting problem. The TAG thinks this loop has gone on long enough, and recommended that WG15 form an ad hoc committee to determine what ISO will accept. 4.2 P1003.1 updates go international WG15 is balloting to make 9945-1.2 (which corresponds to 1003.1a, draft 5) a Draft International Standard (DIS). The TAG approved the U.S. position with comments. What's that mean? Voting within WG15 is done by member country. To arrive at the U.S.'s position on a WG15 ballot, the TAG members draft a position then vote on it, one vote per corporation. (POSIX participation, in contrast, is by individuals.) The final ballot resolution is presented to WG15 as the U.S. position, Sometimes a voice vote suffices, but DISs, NPs (New Proposal, formerly New Work Item), or CDs (Committee Document, formerly Draft Proposal), require a letter ballot. The initial letter-ballot vote was nine yesses, two noes (with comments), three abstentions; the two negative ballots were from Sun and AT&T. We considered three options for AT&T's comments: 1. do nothing and write a response to AT&T explaining why, 2. pass the comments on to WG15, or July, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 - 4 - 3. pass the comments on to the 1003.1 working group, who could better judge their technical merits, and chose the third. In contrast, we incorporated Sun's comment into our position. Though someone suggested that AT&T might not be getting fair treatment, Sun's comment (which simply noted that a change made in chapter eight was not reflected in chapter two) was only a response to the TAG ballot, while the AT&T comments, were more far-reaching responses to 9945-1.2 itself and demanded a different forum. Nevertheless, the group asked the ad hoc committee reforming TAG procedures to reconsider the ballot resolution process. 4.3 How can you be two places at once (when you're ... )? In light of the amount of time TAG meetings keep members from attending working groups, we decided to meet Sundays before and Thursdays and Fridays during the POSIX meetings. This new schedule will start with the Seattle meeting in October. The idea is to complete as much as possible on Sunday and have Thursday and Friday available if necessary. We agreed that the TAG should allocate this much time to avoid one-day meetings like this one. The SEC meeting schedule may force this to change; several TAG members are TCOS officers, committee chairs, or Institutional Representatives, all of which are automatically SEC members. 4.4 Last, least Both P1237 and X3T5.5 are working on remote procedure calls (RPC). X3T5.5 is specifying the data stream encoding and P1237 is working on the Application Programming Interface (API). The TAG recommended that the API work be brought to the ISO level under the WG15 umbrella. July, 1990 Standards Update U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 Volume-Number: Volume 20, Number 151