Austin Group Status Report                      Austin-264 Page 1 of 1
Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group.              August 3, 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 (see Austin/243).  

The most recent documentation deliverable is the 2004 edition of the
standard published on April 30 2004. 

The 2004 Edition is formally known as:
    IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition
    The Open Group Technical Standard Base Specifications, Issue 6
     
    Includes IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, IEEE Std 1003.1-2001/Cor 1-2002 
    and IEEE Std 1003.1-2001/Cor 2-2004 

The standard is also an ISO/IEC international standard, denoted as ISO/IEC
9945:2003 and comprises four parts:

Part 1: Base Definitions
Part 2: System Interfaces
Part 3: Shell and Utilities
Part 4: Rationale

ISO/IEC decided to publish technical corrigenda rather than
produce a new 2004 edition. The technical corrigenda
were published in September 2004 and have the designations
	ISO/IEC 9945-1:2003/Cor.1:2004(E)
	ISO/IEC 9945-2:2003/Cor.1:2004(E)
	ISO/IEC 9945-3:2003/Cor.1:2004(E)
	ISO/IEC 9945-4:2003/Cor.1:2004(E)
respectively. Final text in pdf of the ISO Technical Corrigenda
(corrections to the 2003 Edition) is freely available from the ISO
web site.

Current efforts are mainly focussed on stability and maintenance. During
late 2004 and the first half of 2005 we have seen availability
of UNIX 03 certified systems to the marketplace (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/

For the POSIX(R): Certified by IEEE and The Open Group register see
http://get.posixcertified.ieee.org/register.html

Recently IEEE and The Open Group have also expanded the POSIX
certification program to include certification for systems
implementing IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 Profile PSE54.

Looking forward, as agreed at the plenary in January 2005 a full revision
of the standard needs to be in motion by December 2006. Any external
documents to be considered for inclusion in the revision need to be put
forward to the group by January 2006, and submitted in full by July 2006.
For further details see the minutes (Austin/239) and also see some
roadmap slides (Austin/241)

Regular periodic  teleconferences continue to be held to review new
defect reports (aardvark).   There are approximately 550 participants
on the main mailing list, with 120 participants to the defect reporting
list. There have been over 8500 messages posted to the main mailing list
since it was established in 1998.

Further information on the Austin Group can be obtained at
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/faq.html

The online version of the standard can be obtained at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html