Austin Group Status Update                              Austin-72 Page 1 of 1
Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group.              March 12th, 2001


The seventh meeting of the joint technical working group
informally known as the Austin Group was held at the
Lucent facility in Alameda, California on March 5-9 2001. The meeting
had 14 attendees.

It was reported that draft five had passed its IEEE ballot achieving
82% approval. At the ISO level, one negative vote was received
(Canada) compared to nine positive votes. The Open Group company
review voting commences on March 16th, closing on March 23rd.

The objective of this meeting was to review the draft five
specifications. A five day plenary session was held, and
for the first time a single pass was completed  on the inbound
aardvark.  Over 2382 change requests were processed (at an average of
71 aardvark requests per hour, this was up
over previous times [51 per hour in Austin,
43 per hour in Reading, 47 per hour in Montreal]). 

On several contentious issues, formal votes of the organizational 
representatives were taken to record the result.
The minutes and documents Austin/SD1, Austin/SD2
should be read for further details. 

The next draft (Draft 6) will be available on April 20th and 
folds in the changes identified by the review of draft 5.
Draft six will be the third feature complete draft. The
purpose of the draft 6 review is to ensure that
all changes identified have been applied correctly. Only objections
may be raised to change bar'd sections.

Draft six review is scheduled for April 23 2000, and will be available
for a 30 day review period, closing in May 2001 .  The formal review
period for draft six will include a 30 day recirculation IEEE ballot .

The final plenary meeting is May 29-June 1st at The Open Group
offices in Reading, UK. This is a four day meeting. Meeting
registration will open shortly.