Standards Update Poll (comments in responses)

[John S. Quarterman]

From: jsq at usenix.org (John S. Quarterman)


8a: What other committees should be covered?

response 6
I'd like reports on ISO committees (I'd *love* to hear snitches about
the ISO Prolog committee).

response 8
I'm not sure what other committees exist :-)

response 10
I tried.

response 11
I believe that Usenix should not be particulary interested in standards. Let
Uniforum or other bodies do that. (If you were as large as IEEE I could see it)
I would rather see the emphasis of Usenix on OS research and development.
I have enjoyed recent papers on distributed systems and such and have less
interest in standards and such. One thing that I really like is Usenix's
sponsorship of scholarships for students and such. One thing I really hate
is Usenix's sponsorship of things like Uunet or sponsoring the development
of public domain uucp's and the like.  

response 12
I run an academic computer center. The information I get now enables me to
plan better for the future, and sometimes to write to someone if I see something
that looks particularly good or bad.

response 16
I think it would be great if you could provide an overall view (once) of
what each group is trying to accomplish, details on a subset of the groups,
and a "floating" review that moves through some of the less popular groups
covering, for instance, one per month.

response 17
Make sure that each POSIX committee is covered. Cover networking standardizationbeyond 1003, i.e. 802.

response 22
[Personal view only!]
Email and Enews are a highly efficient way of covering, tracking, and
operating the standards process which must include -
-identification of standards-needs
-debate of technical and commercial issues in the decision of work on
a standard
-identification(if possible) of an existing de facto basis for a de
jure standard
-discussion of technical and commercial issues in formulation of a standard
-circulation of drafts, contributions, etc
-circulation of suggested modifications, arguments, etc
-voting
The USENIX participation in Enews and Email forms a valuable
informative contribution. It could be extend to promote some or all
of the above between its members and amongst other standards-related
workers

response 24
We'd like to see a regular report on the supercomputing committee; only
thing we've seen so far was a paper at the April 90 CUG meeting.

response 36
P1201.*
The ISO JTC committee on icons, etc.

response 37
Few: committees that are working on well-legitimized standards subjects
(e.g., 1003.1, .2, but not .4) should be covered well. Less legitimized
standards subjects should be mentioned and documented, but there's already
enough heat and light emanating from them that we don't need any more
coverage.

response 40
X3V1 for printing standards, ODP Distributed Applications work, P1203 User Interace work.

response 43
I like the snitch reports. I think that some of my answers may be
misleading. For example, I said that I do not read the snitch reports
in ;Login. That is true because I have already read them on comp.std.unix.
It does not mean that I am not interested.

response 45
Usenix is the only brake I have found on the Standards Steamroller.
We need better, more elegant standards, in the tradition of Unix and TCPIP
and fewer monstrosities like X and OSI.

response 50
The Mass Storage Standards Committee should be covered.

response 51
The uncovered TCOS groups and X3J16 (I'm working on it).

response 61
Interface standards and Languages

response 64
The ones currently covered are the only ones I know, so how can I
answer this question?

response 67
Not familiar with full extent of current coverage, but am interested
in SGML and other document-oriented standards (eg, the initiative
sponsored by Assoc. Comp. Linguistics et al.); this may or not be
of interest to Unixers in general

response 68
Interesting effort. I must confess that I answered 3, because in many cases I
don't KNOW what you are currently doing. We (sun) have lots of
internal traffic about standards efforts, and I don't personally follow
yours other than via the newsgroup. One only has a finite amount
of time....

response 70
Keep up the comp.std.unix POSIX.* snitch reports.
Try to have them follow the meetings by no more than a month.

response 75
|

response 76
The X/Open work and their effect on POSIX and vice versa. More
on ISO POSIX.

response 79
My professional interest and an area of vital importance to
the future of UNIX as it becomes more distributed via RPCs and
such is high speed networking.. at a minimum things like XTP
over FDDI, HIPPI esp the datagram work, SONET. The SW like
groups I would be most interested in following are the
POSIX threads people and the RPC people (I think there is
some such working group), but we have been mostly involved at
the HW level to date and I have just done a cursory reading over
comp.std.unix.
.....
I do think there is a potential for too many, too undefined standards
and would urge your group to be careful. IMHO the whole OSI mess
shows the danger of too many cooks. The thing that most offends
myself (and my boss) is that you can't just anon FTP copies of OSI
and such like standards from the NIC. We actually bought paper
copies of a few we thought might be relevant. When we got them they
were: expensive, lousy xerox copies, out of date. But what
do I know anyway, I do hardware.

response 88
Add non-POSIX committees (e.g. X3) which have impact on UNIX, C, etc.

response 91
This is a very difficult question (as I'm sure you know). You can't
cover everything with limited resources, yet there are many standards
bodies which are having an effect on (yechh) Open Systems. Perhaps
a coordinating and synthesis role is more appropriate for user groups.
For example, how many UNIX users know about the intersecting effects
of TCSEC, OSI, NIST anmd other bodies on UNIX contents and interfaces?
I guess as many committees as possible with reasonable quality...

response 92
The problems I have with the standards committees and covering them
is that I get the feeling the "common user" is not invited. While
it is necessary to hear from the industry gurus and vendors, I have
a feeling all this is going over the heads and behind the backs of
those of us in the trenches who will have to work with these standards
later. There has to be some way to include the users in the process.
And that's the problem. I would have liked to be involved with
the ANSI C standards committee and some of the POSIX committees but
either I didn't find out about possibly getting involved until too late
or I don't have the time of the executive of a software house to
pursue membership. Avenues for "part-time" members should be more
open then they have been and allowed to be filled by different people.
Additionally, there should be a better distribution method for
documents reguarding the standards. By the time I've seen some of these
documents, they've gone through another set of revisions and when I
comment on them, I sound like a fool because the concerns were already
addressed.
If I can get involved in a standards committe, I would. I just
can't make it a full time effort but would be willing to do the best
job I could with the time I can put into it.

response 96
Language committees if they relate to UNIX (Fortran, perhaps).


8b: What committees should *not* be covered?

response 16
All groups should get some coverage.

response 37
See previous comment -- let's not spend USENIX resources on the set of these
activities that are out of control. Let's simply point out that these
exist and are controversial and let those who are interested find out more
about the controversy.

response 40
COBOL, Fortran

response 43
I don't care much about eurpoean standards which are not world
standards. If fact, if your coverage were limited to American National
and ISO standards, I would be happy.

response 45
Usenix has limited resources. We should not dilute the coverage to
the point that the Usenix influence ceases to be felt.

response 51
I don't think it makes sense to cover groups that are largely done,
like the C standards group. Having said that, I think that there's still
a lot of interest in groups like 1003.1, that should be done but aren't.

response 64
The ones that are currently covered are fine - I do not
reccommend dropping any

response 75
|

response 88
Continue current coverage, plus above.

response 92
All should be covered. Including hardware standards (i.e. bus).

response 96
I don't think much of the OSF and UI, but they're going to have an
effect so I guess I'd like to be informed of what they're doing.


8c: What else should the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee do?

response 16
Provide an overall view for Usenix, subsidize costs for Usenix members to take
a more active role.

response 24
The Committee should lobby the appropriate standards committees
on issues they feel are of significant importance.

response 30
Keep the standards bozo's from screwing everything up. Thanks for the
white paper on sysadmin standardization.

response 51
I'd like to see USENIX continue influencing standards.
I think that it can best do so by sponsoring thoughtfully written pieces
of various sorts, and by active collaboration with other users' groups.

response 54
Always be aware of standard practice and the effects of new initiatives.
It does no good to specify an interface that will break a significant
number of existing applications.

response 58
So long as you're letting the membership know what is going on, ina
timely manner, that's about all that you need to do.

response 64
Nothing more or less than it does, provided that it is able
to cover all the committees

response 69
Produce a dynamic "summary" document to allow "users" to know the
current status of various efforts. Include as attachments drafts and
standards and provide updates as needed. Also address FAR's FIPS etc.
for government users. Charge for this service as needed to break even.

response 75
|

response 79
Keep an eye on those folks at NIST!

response 88
Leverage current activities through cooperative ventures with
other major user groups or associations.

response 91
See answer to 8a

response 92
Provide a louder voice for the programmer in the trenches and the
forum or the entry to voice those opinions and have them taken seriously.
Or at least until the explanation as to why the idea will not work.

response 96
Send feedback into the committees.


8d: What should the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee *not* do?

response 16
All the work themselves! ;-) I would like to see more general participation.

response 37
It should not submit positions, nor forumlate positions, on standards.

response 40
Stay out of marketing turf battles like UI vs. OSF.

response 43
I don't believe that the Watchdog Committee should turn into a barking
or biting dog. Just report. Do not become part of the process. Do
not become enmeshed in the politics.

response 51
The committee should not turn into a formal bureaucracy.
I like the volunteerism it trumpets. For me, it is a reminder
that people--not corporations--are still the key to UNIX.

response 54
Never strike an alliance with a vendor or vendor consortium unless
that consortium has a record of fair play.

response 58
Assume that it knows all the right answers, or that it should be
the only source of information available, or that for some reason
it is necessarily the best source of information (although maintaining
that as a goal would be a nice touch)

response 75
|

response 79
Generate new standards

response 88
Be flippant about the process of consensus building.

response 91
Another vexed question. Whether user groups should form into lobby
groups for standards activity is difficult - I'm aware of the
"world standards" initiative, and I think that it's worthwhile.
It's also enormously politically difficult, of course :-)

response 96
I have no complaints with what they've been doing so far. It
should be obvious that too much input from vendors is a dangerous
thing, so I'll just leave it at that...


8e: What else should USENIX do regarding standards?

response 6
Contribute to the criticism of *existing* standards.
Reports on the effect that existing standards have had, the extent
to which they are observed. Ok, it's not feasible to do a lot of
this, but it would be useful to know say, how much attention I
should pay to ASN.1. Particularly when there is a continuing
"interpretation" process, as for Ada and C, it would be nice to
hear about those things.

response 9
Promote reference implementations of standards.
The X Window System is one example; there should be others.
For example,
you could modify GNU utilities to produce reference implementations.

response 16
I think that Usenix should take a more active role in the standards areas. I
personally would be interested in particpating on some of the reviews.

response 17
Workshops.

response 21
Discourage standardization of immature technology.


response 24
I'd like to be able to get an update on FIPs activity from comp.std.unix.
I have all the names and numbers to call at NIST, and they are very
helpful there, but when I have a question about the status of a
FIPs I figure a lot of other people probably do, too, and why not
answer all of us at once in a public forum?

response 39
Lobby to maintain online (electronically accessible) copies of software
standards.  Yes, I know that sales and publication provide the income which
allows the standards committees to go on creating standards, but if you ask me,
there could stand to be a bit less of that in the computer software arena
anyhow.  Although actually, I think having electronically accessible standards
documents (and drafts, especially) will, if anything, increase interest in the
standards, and the number of potential participants.

response 40
USENIX should take a look at the standards process and its value to its members.
This should be done by a special committee of the BoD. In addition to providing
valuable information, such a study could help guide BoD decisions.

response 43
It would be great if current drafts were available from uunet. I know
that the standards organizations need to generate $ by selling standards,
however, they charge rip-off prices. Global Engineering wanted $75 for
a draft of X3.159. The final standard *only* cost $40 with my ANSI member
discount. [[BTW -- My company contributes over $50,000/year to ANSI]].
---
The main reason that I want the documents on-line is for ease of access and
not for cost savings. I know Hal generates postscript as part of the document
generation process. The postscript files could be made available. That would
not expose the troff source to the world.

response 50
Take an active role in getting the information out. Why aren't white
papers and committee minutes on-line? You might get more involvement
if people could ftp information from some place and read it.

response 51
Anything to support users' work to advance UNIX.

response 54
USENIX needs to be active in ISO and IEEE committees to protect the
interests of users. The visibility of modern-day standards efforts
has attracted hundreds of vendor representatives who are struggling
to take control of various focus groups.

response 58
I'd tend to think that given that we have a group reporting to the membership
about what's going on in committee, that there should be some way to solicit
input from the membership about the material reported and feed that back
into the standards process.

response 61
Hmmm<tm>. Sometimes I think too many diverse interestes are doing too much.
But when the good folk need support on SC22 for some dumbo's proposal, we need
all the help we can get. And no, you can't quote me on that.

response 75
|

response 77
Just keep involved please....

response 79
One thing that seems to be missing is a database on what is available
that complies to std umpty ump, whether it has passed conformance
test XXX, if it has know problems working with vendor Z's also
conforming umpty ump product. Maybe there is on opportunity here.

response 88
Coordinat ballots with other institutional reps

response 92
Be a more visable presence.

response 96
Encourage extensions and alternatives. There are things being standardised
that are way premature: system administration, for one, or windowing. I
think building standards from nothing, or standardising on a clearly
clumsy technology (X) is worse than no standards at all. The System
V.3 system administration suite is the best I have seen on an actualy
working UNIX system, and should be given quite a bit of weight... it's
the only existing practice worth a damn. If someone could put pressure
on Sun to dedicate NeWS to the public domain it would save Sun's and
everyone else's bacon...


8f: What should USENIX *not* do regarding standards?

response 16
It is important that Usenix not get itself dragged into the middle of all the
standards activites and not get into the "poltics" of the activites more than
it has to. It can provide a good "non-aligned" and technical view.

response 29
Have any of its own, there's too many competing outfits as it is

response 37
See previous comment -- it should not take positions.

response 43
Don't take technical positions. Each of the members is capable of expressing
himself.

response 51
I don't think it makes sense for USENIX to duplicate the efforts of
UniForum. The UniForum technical committees and the POSIX Explored documents
are praiseworthy; we should encourage, but not imitate them.

response 58
Try to set itself up as the governing body for standards creation, or
as the "owner" of any of the standards.

response 75
|

response 77
Support the opinions of individuals, i.e. especially board members,
to the standards committees. Try only to do the best at supporting
the best interests of *ALL* members.

response 81
Do not ignore the standards.

response 92
Sit in the background and only watch.

response 96
First, do no harm.
Don't get caught up in the standards bandwagon: don't get behind standards
for the sake of standardising. Some things aren't ready.


8g: What else do you want us to know?

response 5
With my not-so-perfect English language knowledge, I had some difficulty
in understanding some questions (they being so brief and not too explatonary),
so it might be that my answers do not really represent my opinions.


response 6
For a lot of the questions above, I didn't really mean "3",
what I really meant was "don't know" or "don't care".


response 8
Basically I'm happy with what is now going on.


response 9
You should consider collaborating with the League for Programming Freedom
regarding current attempts to copyright and/or patent software interfaces.
Such attempts are in direct conflict with standard setting,
and will gravely hurt the software industry in the future.


response 13
As you can probably tell from my answers, I tend to ignore the standards 
process.  Thus, I don't have strong opinions on how the process should be done
or changed.
However,  I am glad that someone is paying attention, and I like
the reports that keep me apprised of what is happening.


response 16
It is good to see the coverage of the standards in the first place. I think a
lot of technical people have been left out, because they didn't know how or
what to do.


response 18
I don't really care about most of this, but your poll didn't give me an option to
indicate that. Therefore, some of the answers you got for the above
are meaningless.
Basically, I think standards are mostly a good thing, and I'm glad some
people are interested in them, and if I ever want to get involved I want
to know where to go. In the meantime, I really am not interested in
seeing extensive reporting on the issues.
Question 7 left our "educator" and "researcher" -- I'm both.

Sun Aug 19 22:26:48 EST 1990

response 22
The above is purely a personal view and does not necessarily represnt
the view of Data Logic or any of its clients


response 24
I find the electronic mailing list, the snitch reports, and the
regular summaries on Standards, Groups, Publications, and Meetings
invaluable and would hate to see them stopped or curtailed.  Before
you do that, please tell us what it would cost to keep them going.


response 26
 

response 34
    - The on-line standards reports have been invaluable to me.  They
      are excellent.  (I work in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
      Office of Laboratory Computing, responsible for computing policy
      and future directions.)


response 39
Since I get ;login: and occasionally read comp.std.unix, it would be nice if
the reports were more clearly labeled by date of writing, or number or
something.  I sometimes end up reading the same reports more than once as a
result.  Also, a bit more editing of the reports wouldn't hurt - there's an
unfortunate tendency towards long-windedness.  Finally, the standards reports
seem to have taken over ;login. I know that a lot of the more academic
articles are now in Computing systems, but I miss the more frequent,
rough-edged but thoughtful or useful articles that used to be in there. There
are at least some of us who are still hoping that not all research goes on
within (or in the context of) standards committees.  I guess that it would be a
good idea to split off the standards reports into a separate newsletter
(though I probably wouldn't pay extra money for it). Perhaps limiting them to
quarterly issues (or less!) might be enough.


response 42
I answered "3" to a bunch of questions to indicate "no opinion" since
this program didn't let me just leave a question unanswered. There
are plenty of subjects which I don't have any idea how much usenix
is doing now, so I don't have an opinion on more or less (for example).


response 43
You had a list of questions about publications and user groups. Some of these
I never heard of. I don't recall them from the publication lists on
comp.std.unix. Maybe you could update those lists.


response 45
Whatever happens, please don't REPLACE the newsgroups -- augment them.


response 46
I have been planning on joining Usenix.  I would rather read these
reports in the news group than in ;login dues to timeliness.

Note you have a bug in your survey (2 5H questions).


response 48
One area I would like to see more standard is the Addressing of Email.
I dislike uucp only sites being second hand citizens.


response 51
I'll kick myself later for letting this straight line pass.


response 54
POSIX committees appear to be considering UI/OSF politics in some
of their actions and that is wrong. Let's keep in mind who we are
trying to protect: the end-user and the application developer.
Let's lobby POSIX to adopt standard practice, to standardize only
those areas in which there is demand for standardization, and to
always hold their meetings in areas where there is a large
concentration of *users.*


response 60
	I basically just browse the standards report in ;login:
	and on-line (mostly in ;login:).  I mostly have no opinion
	regarding these questions.



response 64
I appreciate the importance of standards, but it's all too easy
to get lost in the multiplicity of committees.


response 65
I like the context provided by the reports, but I usually get confused
by (1) the proliferation of standards groups, many of which seem to
have overlapping charters; (2) the alphabet, er, number soup game
("let's see, .1, that's, uh, system calls?").  It would be good if
this could be clarified every now and then, but it's probably not
worth doing in every issue of ;login.


response 71
Generally happy with current state of affairs; is not broken and does
not especially need fixing, from my perspective.  (Well, except for
excessive enthusiasm for long tedious polls... :-))

response 75
|
|

response 76
I am also a member of EUUG-S (European UNIX User Group in Sweden).


response 77
You've all done very well so far. Keep up the good work. I really like
this poll, and the simple way in which it works.


response 78
Now that I'm no longer on a P1003 working group, the ;login,
snitch reports, etc are great ways to keep in touch with Posix land


response 81
I am appalled that, despite being POSIX conformant (or nearly so?)
BSD UNIX -- vastly easier to use -- is so little represented in
commercial UNIX products. Furthermore, references to USENIX appear
almost never in the commercial press. Both USENIX and
BSD UNIX have a whole lot to offer commercial business, and I'd
like to see them as widely known as they are valuable.


response 84
I have not had much experience with standards forming commitees, hence the
lack of expression of strong opinions above. I do not have a lot of spare
time to devote to keeping up with evolving standards but I have found
;login: 's coverage informative. I've occasionally read some standards reports
in UNIX review but cannot at this time justify a subscription - hence the 'n'
reply above. Coverage of the general directions of evolving standards is
all I really need and ;login: satisfies that fairly well. Technical detail is
really only needed by me to understand certain controversies (i.e. clarification
of the 14 character filename limit in POSIX 1003.1 WRT BSD and Sys Vr4).


response 86
Are you interested in doing more about any other issues
regarding UNIX aside from "standards"....seems to me
there are some general philosophical issues that will
be affecting UNIX i.e. Lotus court case...that might
justify some involvement by USENIX...


response 87
The editor's plans outlined in last ;login: seemed good.


response 88
Each of the current user groups/associations tend to represent
distinct segments of the user population. There are, however,
significant overlaps of activities. Better cooperation between
groups and associations, such as cooperative ventures on standards
activities, would go a long way toward improving the UNIX
community and showing a more united front to those organizations
which are migrating to UNIX/open systems. Having UNIX-Democrats
and UNIX-Republicans is OK (read GOOD THING), but having each
functioning in an insular manner is not (read BAD THING).


response 92
I want to know how to get involved even on a part time basis. I reallyy
thing there's a body of knowledge and insight being lost by not
contacting those of use with limited time.


response 93
Although i only occassionally get through enough net news to reach this
newsgroup, i will attempt to do so more frequently now that i've discovered
you all produce these reports on standards. I would hope these public
contributions will not be discontinued. Thanks!


response 95
Well, the next time you make such a poll, you might consider leaving an
option to *not* answer a question in your script. To a lot of the questions, I
simply do not have any good answer. As it is, I could only guess as to a
neutral one...


response 96
I think y'all are doing a great job. Keep it up.


Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 101