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- From: jsq@usenix.org (John S. Quarterman)
-
- At the January meeting of the IEEE/CS TCOS SEC (the group that approves
- new standards projects for the IEEE Computer Society), 11 new PARs
- (Project Authorization Requests) were approved. This led to a bit of
- a reaction at the April meeting, last week in Snowbird, Utah. All of
- the Institutional Representatives and various industry representatives
- pointed out that 11 PARs might be a few too many. This led to the formation
- of an ad hoc committee to solve the problem. The immediate result was a
- list of criteria that should be examined for each PAR. Here they are,
- as supplied by the TCOS SEC chair, Jim Isaak. Incidentally, not all
- PARs submitted at the April meeting were approved; all PARs submitted
- were examined after these criteria were accepted by the SEC.
-
- John S. Quarterman, USENIX Institutional Representative to IEEE/CS TCOS SEC.
-
-
- TCOS SEC N165
- Criteria for PAR Approval April 25, 1990
-
- SEC ad hoc committee on PAR Approval
- [approved at April 25 meeting, clarification/revision expected]
-
- Criteria should be assumed to apply to all PARs. PARs which a submitter
- believes are exempt from certain criterion should state the reasons for
- such an exemption during the PAR submission process. If such an exception
- requests that a PAR be approved when there is not an existing body of work,
- the submitter must indicate why preliminary work should not be done in
- another forum first, and then moved into a TCOS sponsored work group.
-
- The following criteria will be applied by the TCOS SEC to all PARs
- submitted for consideration of sponsorship:
-
- 1. There must be existing industry experience which represents a
- substantive portion of the scope of the PAR.
-
- 2. There must be a base document with community support from which the
- work can be started. If there are several documents, then there must
- be evidence of the willingness of the affected parties to work
- together to generate a single standard.
-
- 3. The scope of work must specify a realistic set of objectives,
- attainable by the specified completion date. Note that the completion
- date must be within a window which allows the produced standard to be
- accepted and useful.
-
- 4. The PAR must specify work which will attain a comparable level of
- acceptance and use as work already completed by TCOS.
-
- 5. For PARs affecting approved standards, a plan for coordination and
- integration of the work must be established. Extensions or
- modifications to approved standards should only be made after careful
- consideration of the impact on the community which relies on these
- stable, approved standards. PARs which propose extensions or
- modifications must indicate the other TCOS standards work which they
- will affect.
-
- 6. Submitters of a PAR must exhibit the communities commitment to
- participate in the work. These particpants must include a viable core
- of administrative personnel (a Chair, a Secretary, and a Technical
- Editor), as well as a sufficient number of technical experts
- representing a reasonable balance of viewpoints.
-
- 7. The PAR's proposed scope of work must be within the scope of TCOS
- activities.
-
- 8. The timeframe for the work specified in the PAR must be appropriate
- given the impact it will have on TCOS resources (e.g. core personnel
- from other active TCOS work groups, meeting space, etc...).
-
- 9. The submitter of a PAR must draft an addendum to the applicable
- section of the POSIX.0 document, including information on the
- requirements of the work. In the case of a PAR for Application
- Environment Profiles this text could be used as their "base document".
- (See requirement 2).
-
- ====================
-
- Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 97
-
-