Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/volume.19/text0085.txt

Internet Message Format | 1990-05-17 | 5.1 KB

From: [e-mail] (Simon Patience)

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jeffrey S. Haemer) writes:
>       1003.4:_Real-Time_Extensions
>       The first of these went to ballot after the New Orleans meeting.
>       Threads, controversial enough to be omitted from .4, has been pushed
>       into .4a.  (Things too controversial to go into threads will be pushed
>       into the multiprocessor group, which should be a lot of fun.)

This is not actually true. Pthreads was never in the draft of 1003.4
proper but was an appendix. After New Orleans when .4 was ready to
ballot, pthreads was not and so could not become a real chapter of its
own within .4 and so got its own PAR. It had nothing to do with being
controversial. Your parenthetical comment is pure fantasy also.

>       The threads subgroup (1003.4A) has attempted to kill the .4 ballot by
>       a block vote for rejection.  One correspondent says they are doing
>       this because .4 is no good without threads.  (I'm told that two
>       ``large, non-vendor organizations'' are part of the coalition against
>       the 1003.4 ballot.  There is rumored to be a special, invitation-only,
>       threads-strategy meeting by these two groups immediately preceding the
>       Utah meeting.  Can anyone confirm this and supply more details?)

More misinformation here. The Common Reference Ballot was written by a
number of people from different organisations some of whom attended the
threads group and some didn't. The endorsements for it came from a
significantly wider audience than the threads group, some of whom I
believe have not been to a .4 meeting either, or at least regularly.
The objections were not related to threads except where an interface
was impossible to be used in a multi-threaded environment.

The rumor of a pre-Utah meeting is completely overblown. OSF and UI
regularly meet, with representatives of our respective member
organizations, to discuss technical matters to try and maximize
commonality between our two systems, especially at the interface level.
The subjects include threads as this is an emerging technology area,
but it is certainly not restricted to threads. As the people involved
in this both attend POSIX meetings, it is natural to take advantage of
the fact that we are all going to be in the same place. The meetings
take place regularly and more frequently than POSIX meetings. We think
this level of cooperation is the sort of thing the industry would
expect us to do, especially the end user community, rather than indulge
in the Unix wars that are restricted to the Trade Press.

>       University of California's Computer Science Research Group (the folks
>       who bring us Berkley UNIX) is also voting against the .4 ballot as a
>       block.  This stand has nothing to do with the lack of a threads propo-
>       sal; the vote objects to the working group's addition of completely
>       new and (their words) ``lame'' features to UNIX. An amusing twist,
>       this.  To a traditional standards activity, one vendor block voting
>       against another, POSIX adds one research group voting against another.

I believe that this was just an endorsement of the Common Reference
Ballot mentioned above, which was submitted by someone at Berkeley. I'm
not sure why this means there is one research group voting against
another, the only other research groups that I can think of that you
might be alluding to also endorsed the common ballot. Would you care to
explain?

>       Both the rush to go to ballot, and the move to tie success of the rest
>       of 1003.4 to threads, should be causes for scrutiny.

I can't think where you get this idea from. There is no desire that I
know of to tie threads to the rest of .4. The people involved are
highly motivated and think that the time is right to standardize on a
thread interface before the industry become too d ivergent. It is felt
be many people that there is enough experience in the industry and
academia to write a good usable standard and are trying to do so.

>       Interestingly, if threads are forced back into the base .4 standard,
>       it may end up causing another problem.  The ACM's ARTEWG (the special
>       interest group on Ada's runtime environment working group) is likely
>       to vote in a block against 1003.4 if it contains a threads proposal
>       that does not support Ada in a natural way.

This is not likely to happen as I said above. The threads group are
talking to the Ada people (constantly it feels like :-) and it is hoped
that when the draft is ready for balloting most of the Ada folks will
be happy. There is a problem with scope which has never really been
properly define with respect to Ada, especially Ada runtime.

Your overall tone was one of suspicion that there is a subversive plot
going on and that half of POSIX is being taken over by a small number
of people in the threads group. This is clearly ridiculous as it could
never happen, the concensus process prohibits it.

  Simon Patience                Phone: [phone]
  Open Software Foundation            FAX:   [phone]
  11 Cambridge Center                Email: [e-mail]
  Cambridge MA 02142                       uunet!osf.org!sp


Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 88