[lsb-discuss] Thoughts on LSB ISO standard

Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu
Tue Jul 31 02:21:58 UTC 2012

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 07:19:51PM -0600, Wichmann, Mats D wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Robert Schweikert <rjschwei at suse.com> wrote:
> >> OTOH, the situation is different now. We do have an ISO standard, and
> >> from the point of view of SC22 we do have to maintain that standard.
> >
> >
> > Why do we have to maintain it?
> >
> > Why can we not just get rid of it or let it lapse and be done with this?
> In the sense that this is what you agree when you submit a standard to
> ISO, and thus what we promised: maintenance is an obligation.  However,
> one possible outcome of that is to simply say you're going to let it drop
> when  the question comes up, which it does on a pre-determined time
> schedule.

ISO/IEC 23360 was approved at the end of 2006.  PAS standards expire
in 3 years, although they can be extended for another term of 3 years,
at which point it must be published as another type of normative
document or be withdrawn.  Was affirmative action taken in 2009 to
actually extend it?  I was CTO of the LF in 2009, and as far as I know
ISO did not take any action to have it be extended in 2009.  At the
time, as I mentioned, I canvassed the LF sponsors, and no one was
interested in paying the $$$$ needed to get an expert who could do the
necessary editing work to make the LSB text have the correct format,
references, etc., etc., to meet the requirements for a full ISO

My understanding at time, after I had talked to Nick, who is well
versed in ISO/IEC's policies and procedures, was that the amount of
work necessary to make sprinkle the appropriate holy penguin pee to
make it smell like an ISO standard, was non-trivial, and would take a
significant amount of work, and hence a significant amount of work
(never mind the necessary travel, meetings, payment of the INCITS
membership fees so the US National Position would be appropriate ---
remember, Sun was still around, and presumed to be hostile to Linux,
so the US National Body position was not guaranteed to be favorable to

Given that 2009 was right in the middle of the implosion of the
financial markets, it's not surprising that people weren't willing to
pay the costs --- but the bigger issue was that no one I talked to
from the Linux Foundation's corporate sponsors saw any benefits of
continuing to maintain the status of ISO/IEC 23360.  From a business
case perspective, it simply just didn't hold up.

As a result, we let the Linux Foundation's PAS submitter status lapse,
and since I didn't hear anything to the contrary, I thought ISO/IEC
23360:2006 had already lapsed and had been withdrawn.

Given that this is another three years later, did someone in SC22
extend ISO/IEC 23360 on our behalf without our knowing it?  Even if it
did, it doesn't seem possible to me that the necessary technical and
editorial work, plus the necessary organizational work, could be done
before the end of the year.  So it would seem that it's inevitable
that even if it didn't lapse three years ago, it would certainly lapse
by the end of the year.


      	    	    	  	     	     - Ted

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