Standards Update, NIST Shell-and-Tools FIPS Workshop

[Dominic Dunlop]

Submitted-by: domo at tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop)

In article <107019 at uunet.UU.NET> hl.rogers at ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM
(HL Rogers) writes:
> There is something to be said for any action which motivates the IEEE
> committees to move a little faster.  This type of action, however, will
> ultimately cost the taxpayer when agencies who purchase D9 implementations
> have to retool a year later because all the developed applications will
> honor the final dot 2 draft.

While we can wish for an ideal world where standards committees are
always able quickly to reach a broad consensus based on well-tried
existing practice, and can deliver a well-rounded document to an
accepting and grateful public, we have to concern ourself with real
life.

Real life is populated by engineers with a variety of opinions,
politicians, lawyers, accountants, and, if you're unlucky, people
waving guns -- all forces which make it more difficult to achieve what
may appear to you to be obvious goals.  Like you, I, and Uncle Sam,
they're just doing their jobs, and may consider different goals to be
obvious.  One just has to evaluate how well one is doing despite their
malign influence.

And I think that requiring conformance to a draft standard is a whole
lot better than not requiring conformance to anything in particular.
Sure, it will be annoying and painful to convert later when the real
thing comes along.  And it will cost real money.  But it will cost a
whole lot less money in total than -- say -- implementing using a
proprietary environment now, and switching to an official POSIX.2 when
it comes along.  Yes, the up-front costs may be higher because a draft
9-conforming environment is likely to be more or less custom-built (or
at least, suppliers are liable to try to stick you for the costs of a
fully custom job, even if such costs are not justified).  But the
downstream costs, including the costs of any draft-to-final conversion,
are likely to be way lower.
-- 
Dominic Dunlop

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 173