From JLS@liverpool.ac.uk Fri Mar 20 15:52:46 1992 Received: from danpost2.uni-c.dk by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA04045; Fri, 20 Mar 92 15:52:46 +0100 Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by danpost2.uni-c.dk (5.65/1.34) id AA07329; Fri, 20 Mar 92 14:51:35 GMT Message-Id: <9203201451.AA07329@danpost2.uni-c.dk> Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by vm.uni-c.dk (IBM VM SMTP V2R1) with BSMTP id 5712; Fri, 20 Mar 92 15:53:01 DNT Received: from UKACRL.BITNET by vm.uni-c.dk (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 0028; Fri, 20 Mar 92 15:53:00 DNT Received: from RL.IB by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 1679; Fri, 20 Mar 92 14:45:00 GMT Received: from RL.IB by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 1196; Fri, 20 Mar 92 14:44:58 GMT Via: UK.AC.LIV.IBM; 20 MAR 92 14:43:39 GMT Received: from JLS@UK.AC.LIVERPOOL by MAILER(4.2.a); 20 Mar 1992 14:41:48 GMT Date: Fri, 20 Mar 92 14:41:24 GMT From: Lawrie Schonfelder Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.66) Re: Procedures comment by Psmith To: SC22/WG5 members X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 ************************** Original message ***************************** Date: Fri, 20 Mar 92 13:57:28 GMT From: Lawrie Schonfelder Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.66) Re: Procedures comment by Psmith To: psmith@com.convex.mozart In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 18 Mar 92 09:43:05 -0600 >The X3J3 committee has gotten a bad reputation due to some of the members >and the way they behaved. I can relate my personal experience of one >of our company's sales people calling me and saying that a member of >X3J3 had attacked him on a sales call because I didn't know what I >was talking about and was un-professional (the words were stronger >than that...),etc. Why would anyone jump a salesperson about a technical >committee issue or member? That's like me jumping the Sun repairman >because I don't like what Sun representive said on the committee. Dumb. >But it happened. In fact, on two different occasions that I know about. I feel I must reply to this since Presley has claimed the high moral ground and has sited the above as an indication of the low. Presley did not name me as the person involved in one of the above cases, but I am quite prepared to own up. I did refuse to deal with a Convex salesman and I indicated that the reason was what I perceived as unprofessional behaviour of a senior member of the company's software development team. What had incensed me was the note that Presley had put out on the net and distributed in wordprocessed form inviting public commentors to "tick here" as a means of providing informed commentary on the draft at its first public airing. Presley was not a member of J3 at the time and he had put out a summary of the contents of F8x which was factually extremely inaccurate, including a number of straight errors. He then suggested that the public commentors need not read the actual draft but should simply send in the comment as suplied by him. I considered this then and still do to have been an unprincipled and unprofessional attempt to subvert the comment process. If the salesman was upset personally by my refusal to deal with Convex as a result I am sorry but I would react in the same way again were the circumstances to repeat themselves. The comment process was not designed to be a referendum, nor was it meant to be a GALLOP pole; it is far too unscientific in its sampling technology for that. The comment process is an attempt to obtain final concidered technical judgement from as wide a section of the interested public as possible. The aim being to ensure that flaws overlooked by the technical committee do not if humanly possible continue into the final standard. The committee is supposed to take comments seriously and it should expect the commentors to given the draft serious reading and consideration before commenting. I do not wish to get drawn into what is largely a discussion about US due process, but I would like to remark that one of the things that upset a number of non-US participants was that for a very long period scant attention was paid by a significant section of J3 to the "due processes" required by WG5 and the international community for whom J3 was acting as the drafting body. From '85 onwards, through the grand compromise, the 1st public comment and on until the Paris'88 meeting J3 had largely gone in precisely the opposite direction to that required by WG5 and by the National body comments on the CD ballot. When J3 voted not to allow the only variant at Jackson to be remotely acceptable to WG5 to be even presented in Paris WG5 was not very pleased with the apparant "due process". Strange as it may seem I am now going to agree with Presley. The time for looking back at the problems of the past is over. A cooperative relationship needs to be rebuilt and the rules of the relationship between J3 and WG5 need to be spelt out so we do not get into the mess again. If that means US procedures might need bringing more into line with international ones then so be it. Lawrie