Draft PAR Evaluation Criteria for the Common Revision AUSTIN-4R1 1. INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE There must be widespread existing industry experience (User, Producer and General Interest) which represents a substantive portion of the scope of the PAR. This project revises existing standards with widespread existing industry experience; the project does not add new material which does not have similar widespread experience. 2. BASE DOCUMENT There must be a base document with community support from which the work can be started. If there are several documents, then there must be evidence of the willingness of the affected parties to work together to generate a single standard. Any such document must be for use free of encumbrances. The bases are 1003.1+supplements, 1003.2+supplements, SUSv2, and 9945-1 and 9945-2. Each of these documents has considerable community support. Representatives of the affected parties have agreed to work together on a single revision replacing all of those documents. Although each base document is encumbered, the copyrights are owned by the organizations which are working together on the revision; this should not prove to be an obstacle. 3. REALISTIC SCOPE AND TIMELINE The scope of work must specify a realistic set of objectives, attainable by the specified completion date. Note that the completion date must be within a window which allows the produced standard to be accepted and useful. Such objectives should include: - Document outline - First Draft - First Ballot Document outline: November 1998 (based closely on base documents) First Draft: July 1999 (Based on a full-time technical editor from TOG) First Ballot: April 2000 (Can't go sooner than 12/31/99 in any event) Final Approval: October 2001 4. APPROPRIATENESS AND INDUSTRY ACCEPTANCE Is there evidence that developers of portable applications will use the results of the work? Not just "is it within PASC scope" but "does this bring sufficient value to the industry" or "does it sufficiently further the interests of the industry"? There is significant evidence that application developers have widely accepted SUS v1, which was based on one set of base documents and from which another set of base documents grew. Many implementors have already built systems which conform to the union of the already completed portions of the base documents and have indicated a willingness to implement the proposed standard. 5. COORDINATION PLAN For PARs affecting approved standards, a plan for coordination and integration of the work must be established. Extensions or modifications to approved standards should only be made after careful consideration of the impact on the community which relies on these stable, approved standards. PARs which propose extensions or modifications must indicate the other PASC standards work which they will affect. This project will be developed by the same people who developed the base standards to be revised. Current "in-flight" supplements are accomodated by the 12/31/1999 "timeout". The developers are willing to work with profile writers to discuss accomodating their needs for options. Non C-language bindings to the base standards may require some work with regard to options; the developers are more than willing to work with the maintainers of the language bindings to assist them in revising their standards. There is an LIS "language binding" ISO project in progress; coordination is expected to be provided by common membership. If 1003.1g is completed in time to be included in the scope of this work, coordination will need to occur with the PASC Distributed Systems Working Group. 6. COMMUNITY COMMITMENT Submitters of a PAR must exhibit the community's commitment to participate in the work. These participants must include a Chair and Technical Editor, as well as a sufficient number of technical experts representing a reasonable balance of viewpoints, and the participants must be willing to support the secretarial function. Committed participants should have expertise in the subject matter or should be able to draw upon resource with that expertise. The identified participants must be prepared to begin work immediately upon the proposed project; PARs will not be sponsored if nobody will actively work the project for some time. Professional project management and TE services will be provided by The Open Group. Many Open Group members and other POSIX system vendors are committed to providing resources for the common revision project. USENIX and DOD (DISA) have expressed committment to working on the project. The following have committed to working the project: The Open Group LLC International Business Machines Corporation Compaq Computer Corporation Hewlett Packard Company DKUUG The US Department of Defence SCO Mt. Bonnell Inc. Sun Microsystems Inc. USENIX Association Softway Systems Inc. 7. WITHIN PASC SCOPE The PAR's proposed scope of work must be within the scope of PASC activities. All within scope (since the base docs from the various organizations have substantial overlap). 8. REASONABLE RESOURCE IMPACT The time frame for the work specified in the PAR must be appropriate given the impact it will have on PASC resources (e.g. core personnel from other active PASC work groups, meeting space, etc.) After 12/31/99, there is almost no work planned within PASC for 1003.1 and 1003.2; thus resources should be available. In addition, the committed effort described in (7) is greater than has been made available for work on a PASC standard in recent years. There is a "wildcard" which may impact the required resources; ISO is in the process of revising the ISO C standard. But since TOG would be revising its specification at this time we do not expect this to adversely impact resources. 9. TEST PLAN We do not intend to produce test methods in parallel with production of the documents, but it is expected that the existing test suites for POSIX will be extended if the business case exists. A parallel revision of 2003.1 may arise if sufficient interest and business relevance can be identified. 10. ISO JTC1 BUSINESS CASE All projects which are expected to be progressed through any ISO JTC1 mechanism must have a business case which is submitted to JTC1 as part of the JTC1 New Project approval process. The pro forma business case definitions are attached as Appendix B. This section of the PAR Evaluation Criteria discusses the relationship between other criteria and the various sections of the pro forma. Market relevance (A.1) is related to criterion 4, Industry Acceptance. There must be a group of likely users of the proposed work; that is, people or organizations that are likely to acquire implementations of the standard. There must also be a group of vendors likely to implement the proposed standard. The group of users must be specifically identified. Regarding Regulatory Context (A.2), it seems likely that regulations of a single nation will be of little interest to ISO. The Related Work criteria (B.1, B.2, B.3) ask for a list of other standards or organizations. It appears that references to any accredited Standards Body or work thereof are acceptable; IEEE projects and documents, in particular, have been mentioned. The Mature Technology status (C.1) derives directly from criteria 1 and 2, Existing Industry Experience and Base Document. Given those criteria, the vast majority of PASC projects proposed for ISO progression should check the Yes box for this item. Other PAR evaluation criteria are designed to strongly discourage projects based on Prospective Technology (C.2); it is very unlikely that PASC would sponsor a project for which the answer to this criterion is Yes. PASC PMC Procedures Appendix B - JTC1 Business Case Pro Forma (Extracted from ISO JTC1 N4477) A. Business Relevance. That which identifies market place relevance in terms of what problem is being solved and or need being addressed. A.1. Market Requirement. When submitting a NP, the proposer shall identify the nature of the Market Requirement, assessing the extent to which it is essential, desirable or merely supportive of some other project. Indicate if this is Essential, Desirable, or Supportive. ISO 9945-1 and ISO 9945-2 are important standards in use throughout the world, and this is a revision to keep them in use beyond Year 2001. This is an essential market requirement. Millions of dollars of applications are built upon these standards. A.2 Technical Regulation. If a Regulatory requirement is deemed to exist - e.g. for an area of public concern e.g. Information Security, Data protection, potentially leading to regulatory/public interest action based on the use of this voluntary international standard - the proposer shall identify this here. Indicate if this is Essential, Desirable, Supportive, or Not Relevant. Not Relevant B. Related Work. Aspects of the relationship of this NP to other areas of standardization work shall be identified in this section. Each of the three subcriteria should indicate whether the work is being performed for the identified purpose, Yes or No. B.1 Competition/Maintenance. If this NP is concerned with completing or maintaining existing standards, those concerned shall be identified here. Yes this is maintenance of 9945-1 and 9945-2. B.2 External Commitment. Groups, bodies, or fora external to JTC1 to which a commitment has been made by JTC for cooperation and or collaboration on this NP shall be identified here. IEEE PASC The Open Group B.3 External Std/Specification. If other activities creating standards or specifications in this topic area are known to exist or be planned, and which might be available to JTC1 as PAS, they shall be identified here. None. C. Technical Status. The proposer shall indicate here an assessment of the extent to which the proposed standard is supported by current technology. For each of the three possible statuses, the technology of the proposed NP should be rated Yes or No. C.1 Mature Technology. Indicate here the extent to which the technology is reasonably stable and ripe for standardization. Yes C.2 Prospective Technology. If the NP is anticipatory in nature based on expected or forecasted need, this shall be indicated here. No, it is a revision based on real need. C.3 Models/Tools. If the NP relates to the creation of supportive reference models or tools, this shall be indicated here. No. D. Any other aspects of background information justifying this NP shall be indicated here. This is a joint project between The Open Group, IEEE PASC and SC22 WG15. See attached. PASC PMC Procedures Appendix C - Additional Requirements on PARs 1. SCOPE In accordance with PASC SEC resolution 9801-02 (SEC N705), any PAR proposing an amendment to 1003.1 or 1003.2 must contain within its scope the following statement: This standard will not change the base standard which it amends (including any existing amendments) in such a way as to cause implementations or strictly conforming applications to no longer conform. Exceptions may be granted to permit resolution of interpretations and technical corrigenda.