From OKSALA@po3.bb.unisys.com Thu Jun 8 15:48:35 1995 Received: from mail.unigate1.unisys.com by icarus.lis.pitt.edu (4.1/1.34) id AA29619; Thu, 8 Jun 95 15:48:35 EDT Received: from x500dir.bb.unisys.com ([192.63.146.10]) by mail.unigate1.unisys.com (4.1/SMI-4.1-1.1) id AA11163; Thu, 8 Jun 95 19:54:37 GMT Received: from it.bb.unisys.com by x500dir.bb.unisys.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA17604; Thu, 8 Jun 95 19:57:27 GMT Received: by it.bb.unisys.com with Microsoft Mail id <2FD77E2B@it.bb.unisys.com>; Thu, 08 Jun 95 15:48:11 PDT From: "Oksala, Stephen P [BB]" To: "Spring, Mike" Cc: "Rutkowski, Tony" , "Garcia, Linda" , "Loughry, Don" , "'O'Donnell, Jon'" Subject: Paper Comments Date: Thu, 08 Jun 95 15:48:00 PDT Message-Id: <2FD77E2B@it.bb.unisys.com> Encoding: 173 TEXT X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0 X-IMAPbase: 1249813035 1 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 Mike: Generally looks o.k. I have abstracted some items from both your letter and Tony's earlier response where I felt compelled (or more accurately addicted) to comment. Steve Oksala "2. I have tries to summarize the exchange between Tony and Steve. I made every effort to focus the abstraction without dropping and critical data. My abstraction is below under the heading "Opening Statements". I am sending a second mail note that contains all the original mail I captured. (I do seem to be missing one from Vinton Cerf.) I would appreciate it if everyone would check my summary, but obviously I am most concerned that I have not misstated the positions from Tony's or Steve's point of view." ***I believe you have an accurate statement of my positions.*** "1. I have been thinking that it would be fun to add Martin Libicki to this mix. I worked with him on the recent assessment of the NIST Information Technology Lab, and found his views quite interesting. I have also just reviewed the printers proof of his new book -- Information Technology Standards -- Quest for the Common Byte. I think he could contribute another valuable perspective. (Martin is a senior fellow at the National Defense University.) Could I ask for some indication of whether you think he might add to the mix?" ***In general I think more minds add to the diversity and thus to the utility, particularly if he is prone to look for points either inbetween or orthogonal to the rest of us*** "Within the traditional SDO's this cost is in the millions of dollars per standard." ***I would suggest that it is true for all 'standards developers', not just the traditional ones, because the cost associated with the time of the individuals involved overwhelms any travel or publications costs. But since the costs are distributed and frequently dumped into 'overhead', nobody pays attention.*** " it does change the focus of technology development from one that is very much market driven to one that has somewhat more of a public policy infusion. " ***I think the culture in some groups (see below) may cause there to be a substantial body of participation from people who are not primarily concerned with either the market or public policy, but whose focus is on improving technology or just having fun building something. So it may be more complicated than this two way assumption.*** "Standards are critical, methodology is a means to an end. This is not to say that the methods of setting standards are unimportant. It is only to say that once a standard is accepted, the method by which emerged is less important than the fact that an accepted standard exist. For example, if we accept that TCP/IP, Microsoft Windows, SQL, and Ethernet are all standards at some level, they are not more or less standards because of the radically different methodologies by which they were developed" ***In some sense I agree with this, but there are some issues. First of all, there needs to be some more rigorous definition of "standard" in this. More importantly, the definition of "accepted" probably needs some clarification." Whether Microsoft Windows and TCP/IP are "more or less standards" relative to each other depends on the definitions, but in most ways they are VERY different beasts.*** "Standards are not ends but means. Standards are not developed for the fun of it. They are mechnaisms which achieve either or both of two goals -- one economic the other related to the public good." ***See comments above. Imputing simple motivations is likely to underestimate the complexity of the process and predict wrong results, particularly when a substantial portion of the population of interest is may not be primarily motivated by either idea.*** "4. What are the significant characteristics of: (a) an accredited SDO (b) a non-accredited SDO (c) a consortia (d) an organization producing public specifcations (e) an organization producing proprietary specifcations " ***I think this one question, investigated with some intelligence, is worth a paper all by itself - particularly if it can address not only organizational distinctions but productivity. I suspect that there are far fewer differences in both areas than most people would suspect.*** " 8. How does government change to play a policy role in a market arena? " ***Before asking this make sure that there is a good defense for the question of why it should.*** "9. How do vendors change when government begins to set policy? " ***And are these changes productive or not*** _______________________________________________________________ FROM TONY RUTKOWSKI'S RESPONSE "Somehow the factor of "culture" has gotten lost here. Over the last year as I have witnessed IETF and old guard organizations again, the differences in age, style, enthusiasm, seem even more stark. Maybe you could do some kind of average age analysis that could prove interesting; or number of retirees." "I would argue that the process and "culture" make a profound difference." ***I agree completely with Tony that there are really profound cultural differences across standards developing organizations and that these differences must be considered. But it is not only the parameters that Tony mentioned - it's the purpose of the participants that may also be different. In my experience (and my perspective comes more from ISO and JTC 1 while Tony's is ITU and IETF) the (usually) older standards people are arguing a case on the best interests of their organizations, while the younger ones may have the good of mankind or technical goodness in mind and think of themselves as individual experts. (There are no absolutes, but I think the focus is very different in different groups.) In this regard, Tony and I might differ on what we consider desirable outcomes or the appropriate behavior of a participant.*** "I don't think you can always say this is the case. Here again you ignore what to many of us has gotten blurred into the background - standards organizations are as much "clubs" for people as they are production mechanisms. Perhaps even more so. There are all kinds of reasons people go to standards meetings other than just developing standards. I don't think you can ignore all these factors." ***Again, I completely agree with Tony. I have seen innumerable instances in many fields where people start developing a standard for an area that is quite adequately covered already, solely because they believe that "their group" has to have a standard. The question is - given that there all these different groups, what can be done to try and minimize the duplication and make sure that the standards developed by all these groups fit together? What kind of mechanism would ensure that it would happen, or at least that the opportunity would exist? This could be one of the roles for the formal process, and it is already happening in certain areas. I would also note that one of the sets of "clubs" is nations - for a variety of reasons. The IETF process ignores national interests as best I see them (or, more accurately, requires them to be presented by individuals) and therefore may run counter to the strong tendencies in most of the world among those who are affected.*** "These standards development mechanisms aren't machines, they are people working together, and you need to deal with all the human factors that this invokes. And creative computer people who write good code are a very different breed than the traditional SDO types who tend to be professional standards people from large organizations who have spend their lives trying to nail down a national monopoly." ***I agree with the thought, but not with the pejorative part that follows it. The question is what the objectives of participants are and ought to be, and then how well they achieve them. It also needs to be noted that the objectives are multi-dimensional as every participant has his personal opinions (technical and political), the objectives of those who are paying him to participate (whether or not they are aware that they are paying, as is sometimes the case when working on electronic committees), and the objectives of the group. Unfortunately these seldom map 100% for anyone.*** Cheers, Steve Oksal