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Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/27
CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Doug Hartman/OSF
Minutes of the OSF Distributed Computing Environment BOF (DCE)
The Open Software Foundation (OSF) hosted a BOF to discuss the
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) work by OSF. It was attended by
about forty people (see list). Doug Hartman, DCE engineering director,
gave a quick tour of the OSF organization, what OSF does, and what DCE
is. (See following slides.) The most important points are:
o OSF is a research and development cooperative that develops things
like Motif, OSF/1, DCE and DME in conjunction with our 300+
members.
o DCE is a set of libraries and programs to be used with existing
networks and transports to create production-quality distributed
systems and applications.
o DCE provides services for RPC, multithreading, network security,
global naming of objects, and a distributed file system. These
services are integrated to provide a consistent foundation.
o The DCE specifications will be available from bookstores within a
few months. DCE code is licensable now. (Implementations before
specifications.) Many companies are planning DCE deployments.
o OSF invites IETF attendees to learn more about OSF, DCE, and our
other activities. Contact hartman@osf.org for more information.
The audience asked a number of good questions throughout the
presentation to clarify points or to understand how this information
might affect them. Some highlights were:
o Question: What about OSI? This doesn't look like OSI, and many OSF
members are active in OSI.
- Answer: DCE does not replace OSI protocols for use by
government organizations and telecomm providers. DCE does
address some of the same technology areas, but is more focused
on production distributed applications which need high
performance, security and interoperability today. OSF is
working with standards organizations to give them the benefit
of our ``existing practice''; we would be happy to see DCE
protocols included in OSI upper layers. (DCE can use OSI lower
layers already.)
o Question: How are decisions made at OSF? Don't the OSF sponsors
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get involved?
- Answer: OSF members give us input as to what they would like
to see us do. We need to cover our costs from license revenue,
so we are motivated to meet the needs of our licensees. While
the OSF board (including sponsors) initially made the
recommendation to pursue interoperability technology in 1988,
OSF employees have made the decisions about what that
technology would be since then. All OSF members are regularly
given the chance to provide their recommendations to us.
o Question: How will we proceed with future OSF <-> IETF
discussions?
- Answer: BOFs sometimes lead to working groups. This does not
seem like the right thing for DCE, since the ``DCE Working
Group'' is already in place at OSF, where it is called the DCE
SIG; it meets about every two months. The most likely course
of action at this point is to have OSF work with the
Applications Area of the IETF. We would be able to present
details about DCE solutions in the areas of RPC, naming,
security, and so forth.
Attendees
Doug Barlow barlow@decwet.dec.com
James Beers beers@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu
Natan Borshansky natanb@turisc.timeplex.com
Randy Butler rbutler@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Edward Cande cande@zk3.dec.com
John Chang jrc@uswest.com
Isaac Choi ichoi@synoptics.com
Scott Cossette sdc@concord.com
Fran Fadden fran@decvax.dec.com
Bill Fardy fardy@ctron.com
Kathryn Fuller kathryn@codex.com
Fred Glover fglover@zk3.dec.com
Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu
Steve Hardcastle-Kille s.kille@isode.com
Douglas Hartman hartman@osf.org
Arthur Lin yalin@srv.pacbell.com
Ellen McDermott emcd@osf.org
Ed Menze menze@cs.arizona.edu
Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu
John Murray murray@premenos.sf.ca.us
Rina Nathaniel rina!rnd!rndi@uunet.uu.net
John Payne jop@wang.com
David Perkins dperkins@synoptics.com
Kary Robertson kr@concord.com
Dan Romascanu dan@lannet.com
Henry Sinnreich hsinnreich@mcimail.com
Carl Smith cs@eng.sun.com
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^L
Dean Throop throop@dg-rtp.dg.com
Sylvia Tom tom_sylvia@tandem.com
John Vollbrecht jrv@merit.edu
Justin Walker justin@apple.com
Peter Williams p.williams@uk.ac.ucl.cs
Joseph Zur zur@fibhaifa.com
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