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- Submitted-by: pc@hillside.co.uk (Peter Collinson)
-
-
- The IEEE POSIX meeting last week had one great topic, or in fact, two,
- depending on your point of view.
-
- OSF had sent in a request to be allowed to create a standard based on
- Motif. The request is technically called a PAR - a Project
- Authorization Request. Not to be outdone and with great regret, Sun
- sent in a PAR for a standard based on OpenLook.
-
- Both of these requests were interesting in that the standard was to be
- created by `direct ballot' (no acronym as yet :-)). This means that a
- working group will not come into existence to discuss the ins and outs
- of the technical content. Someone will create a `standards document'
- from existing documentation and this new document will form the basis
- of the standard. The draft document then enters the normal balloting
- process.
-
- The final decision of the SEC (Sponsor Executive Committee), the body
- charged with making a decision about the PARs, was effectively to say:
- at this time, we will not go ahead with accepting the proposals as
- POSIX projects.
-
- If this resume is wrong, I would be grateful for correction.
-
- The purpose of this article is to raise this issue in a general forum,
- there are a great number of questions here. There are many possible
- positions that can be taken. I don't want to be seen to prejudge the
- issue by asking too many questions.. so perhaps the topic for debate
- should be
-
- Was the decision of the SEC wrong?
-
- Peter Collinson
- Usenix Standards Representative
-
- [ Peter told me he was tempted to post this to ieee.org as well, and I was
- tempted to place followup's there. However, as long as any discussion this
- generates relates mostly to how it will affect unix standards, I will keep
- it here. -- mod ]
-
- Volume-Number: Volume 23, Number 37
-
-