Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!TWG.COM!mrose From: mrose@TWG.COM (Marshall Rose) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: ISO VTP Message-ID: <13517.584423362@twg.com> Date: 9 Jul 88 03:49:22 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa Organization: The Internet Lines: 58 It is so tempting to simply flame at you two (Kastenholz and Smart) but rather than do so I will explain, calmly, the errors of your ways. Consider this a pronouncement of The Truth. It is a mistake to, as Robert Smart suggests, > Anyway we don't want the standard ISO documents on-line. They're > incomprehensible (except for the CLN documents which are nice). What > we want is a description of the protocols that us ordinary folk can > read. re-edit the ISO documents and then distribute them. The ISO documents use a consistent OSI terminology and are perfectly comprehensible from the basis of that framework. Three years ago I was unable to read an OSIfied document and make sense out of it. Today I am able to, and can tell you that the network layer documents aren't really any better or worse than any of the other OSI documents with respect to readability. In fact, if you want to read a truly outrageous document, get a copy of "The Internal Organization of the Network Layer" (the IONL), which will convince any thinking person that the TCP/IP architecture is vastly superior to the full-blown OSI network layer. The reason why the ISO documents are copyrighted is not so Omnicom can make a paltry sum of money on each standard (the ~$1000 figure is for their update service in which they filter the output of standards bodies for you and send you the things that you are interested in seeing). The real reason is so that NO ONE WILL EDIT THEM AND MAKE THE CLAIM THAT THE RESULT IS RELATED TO THE ORIGINAL STANDARD The problem with having anyone edit them is that you lose meaning and misinform. OSI documents make sense once you learn the lingo. It is more formal than the language used in the DARPA/NSF Internet community (plain English) but it is not as bad as the way the Inca of Peru used to write things down (they stored information on strings, carefully knotted in a specific manner and with colored thread). Now, having told you The Truth, keep in mind that I think that it would be nice for someone to write a moderately lengthy explanation of what each OSI standard is saying, and to write that in a more easy to understand format. It would be less accurate, but would be useful for getting across the gist of things. However, editing standards and the like is simply the wrong way to do it. /mtr ps: The word "OSIfy" is a new word that I invented earlier this year. The precise meaning is: "to obscure, to make unclear for no good reason" It is often used in the context of the output of standards committees, although its use is not limited to committees which produce OSI standards. In fact, some might claim that MILSTD 1778 is an OSIfied version of RFC793.