Subject: N 3981-Austin Group Status Report

From: Sally Seitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:39:26 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces

Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3981

TITLE:

Austin Group Status Report

DATE ASSIGNED:

2005-09-27

SOURCE:

Liaison Representative (Nick Stoughton)

BACKWARD POINTER:

N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:

Other (defined)

PROJECT NUMBER:

N/A

STATUS:

This document is circulated for information.  

ACTION IDENTIFIER:

FYI

DUE DATE:

DISTRIBUTION:

TEXT

CROSS REFERENCE:

DISTRIBUTION FORM:

Def

Address reply to:

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat

Sally Seitz

ANSI

25 West 43rd Street

New York, NY  10036

Telephone:  (212) 642-4918

Fax:             (212) 840-2298

Email:  [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> 

_________________end of cover sheeting, beginning of document_________

Austin Group Status Report                      Austin-268 Page 1 of 1

Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group.              September 24, 2005

The Austin Common Standards Revision Group (CSRG) is a joint technical
working group established to consider the matter of a common revision of
ISO/IEC 9945-1, ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE Std 1003.1, IEEE Std 1003.2 and the
appropriate parts of the Single UNIX Specification. Having completed the
initial deliverable in late 2001, the group is presently working on
maintenance activities including producing two technical corrigenda so far,
and interpretations of the standard. Looking forward, the group has laid out
an initial roadmap for the next revision in document Austin/243(see note i)
and is now commencing on the first part of that roadmap, the steps are
outlined towards the end of this report.

Current efforts continue to focus on stability and maintenance,

with defect report processing being the main work item. 

Regular teleconferences are being held to review new

defect reports (aardvark).  Since Technical Corrigendum 2 was published,

249 defect reports have been received and are being worked on:

      * Base Definitions volume: 60, 

      * Shell and Utilities volume: 77, 

      * Rationale volume: 6, 

      * System Interfaces volume: 106.

There are approximately 550 participants on the main mailing list, with 120
participants to the defect reporting list. There have been over 10000
messages posted to the main mailing lists since they were established in
1998 (8600+ to the discussion list and 1900+ to the defect report list).

The first products aligned with the standard have appeared in the
marketplace.  During late 2004 and the first half of 2005 we have seen
availability of four UNIX 03 certified systems (UNIX 03 being a profile
based on the XSI extension of the Base standard) and the first POSIX
certified system.

For the UNIX 03 certification register see

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
<http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/> 

For the POSIX(R): Certified by IEEE and The Open Group register see

http://get.posixcertified.ieee.org/register.html
<http://get.posixcertified.ieee.org/register.html> 

We have also seen several open source projects utilizing test tools from The
Open Group to assess their alignment with the standards, and the uptake of
the documentation within several open source projects(the Linux Man Pages
project and the FreeBSD project).

IEEE and The Open Group have expanded the POSIX certification program to
include certification for systems implementing IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 Profile
PSE54. This will be supplemented in early 2006 with the addition of
certification for IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 Profile PSE52.

Looking forward, as agreed at the plenary in January 2005 a full revision of
the standard is planned to commence by December 2006.

There are three input streams going into the revision (see note ii):

1. Issues from SD/5 (see note i) ; 2. Interpretations and Closed Defect
Reports ; 3.  External documents proposed to be considered for inclusion.

For item 3, the external documents, the Austin Group is calling for
submissions in principle to be put forward to the group by January 9 2006
(see note iii), they should meet the criteria in Appendix A below.

The revision will be considered at a plenary planning meeting to be held in
the first quarter of 2006 (likely to be February). This will determine the
precise milestones involved for the revision, and consider the proposals for
external documents to be included.  For external documents that are agreed
to be included in principle, a full proposal should be submitted including
detailed editing instructions by July 31 2006.

Further information on the Austin Group can be obtained at

http://www.opengroup.org/austin/faq.html
<http://www.opengroup.org/austin/faq.html> 

The online version of the standard can be obtained at

http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html
<http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html> 

-----

Notes:

(i) Numbered documents and Standing Documents can be obtained from the
Austin Group Document register at

http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docreg.html
<http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docreg.html> 

(ii) A summary diagram is available in Austin/164 to illustrate the input
streams to the next revision.

(iii) Submissions of new material should be submitted to the Austin Group
Chair.

-----

Appendix A:

Criteria for Inclusion of new interfaces

The recommended criteria for development of new interfaces to enable them to
be considered for inclusion in a future revision are as follows:

1.There must be a written specification that has undergone a formal
consensus based approval process and is suitable for inclusion.

Parties interested in submitting new work items through one of the three
organizations within the Austin Group (The Open Group, IEEE, ISO/IEC) should
contact the appropriate Organizational Representative for further
information and advice on how each organization handles new work items.

Submissions from other organizations will also be considered.

Items 2 through 4 below apply to all submissions regardless of origin.

2.There must be an implementation, preferably a reference implementation.

3.The specification must be "sponsored" by one of three organizations 

(The Open Group, IEEE, ISO/IEC) within the Austin Group, i.e. they would
support and champion its inclusion. 

4.Submitters must provide an outline plan of the editing instructions to
merge the document with the Austin Group specifications, and assistance to
the Austin Group editors as required to complete the merger.

For an example, see

http://www.opengroup.org/sophocles/show_mail.tpl?source=L
<http://www.opengroup.org/sophocles/show_mail.tpl?source=L&listname=austin-g
roup-l&id=434> &listname=austin-group-l&id=434

-----

Andrew Josey                                The Open Group  

Austin Group Chair                          Thames Tower, 37-45 Station
Road,

Email: [email-masked]                Reading,Berks.RG1 1LX,England

Tel:   +44 118 9508311 ext 2250             Fax: +44 118 9500110

Sally Seitz

Program Manager

ANSI

25 West 43rd Street

New York, NY 10036

Phone: (212) 642-4918

Fax: (212) 840-2298

Email:  <mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked]

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