Report on IEEE/CS TCOS-SS SEC

John S. Quarterman jsq at tic.com
Thu Feb 7 06:26:43 AEST 1991


Submitted-by: jsq at 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 at 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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                                       - 9 -

       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 at 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



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