[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Bob Purvy]

Thanks, Bill! Everything helps.

On Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 11:12 AM Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 1:02 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> ... to operate TCP/IP networks, noting that the federal mandate, by
>>> specifying
>>> only procurement, did not prohibit the use of products built around the
>>> more familiar and more readily available TCP/IP.*
>>>
>>
>> ... in particular stuck out for me. Admins were required to go OSI, but
>> somehow it never happened.  Does anyone have any personal stories to
>> relate
>> about this, either your own or someone else's?
>>
>
> (I was out of government systems by 1990 but was still talking to MAP
> (naturally), so this is my memory of his commentary, plus what has been
> discussed here over the last decade. Take with large grain of salt.)
>
> I read this as the mandate tacitly acknowledged that ISO/OSI ISORM- and
> GOSIP-compliant products were just not available COTS (Commercial
> Off-the-Shelf), such that an injection of procurement $$$ was required to
> spur development. (And GOSIP even less so than international OSI.)
>
> In the 1980s, to elucidate the advantage of *working *standards over
> *paper* standards, MAP described the ISORM OSI/GOSIP mandated preferred
> competitor to the ARPAnet Reference Model & TCP/IP stack as if a teen asks
> parents for a car, and is handed a *photograph* of a frame with engine &
> drivetrain, four different size wheels mounted, but no body, let alone
> friperies like windows or seats.
>
> So anyone doing *Information Technology* with a limited budget and tight
> schedule (i.e., without a procurement project manager, procurement budget,
> and lengthy government procurement schedule), would just order COTS and
> justify it as COTS. (And if necessary, declare the COTS as "only an interim
> solution" and sketch vague plans to request additional budget for a
> procurement for GOSIP-compliant products in some nebulous glorious future,
> provided Congress granted the budget increase needed to do that.)
>
> The "interim" solution of TCP/IP etc Internet protocol stack continues to
> mostly function (albeit half-baked as per recent thread).
>
> One might say GOSIP Federal IT is much like the promise of Fusion power
> ... it has remained 10 years (and many $$) in the future for several
> decades. :-D
>
>
> *Disclosure*: I'm writing historical fiction, mostly because that's what I
>> want to do. So there won't be any actual names in whatever I write. I'm
>> interested in the private choices people make, not the institutions,
>> towering figures, and impersonal forces that most historians write about.
>>
>
> Given that angle, i don't know if MAP's memoir "*And They Argued All
> Night...*" from 2000 will be of any help at all.
>   https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/RFC/allnight.html
> (invited memoir essay for *Matrix News* magazine's "*Lest They Forget/Be
> Forgotten*" series (Peter H Salus
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_H._Salus>, Ed.), © *2000*)
>
>
> --
> Bill Ricker
> Executor, Literary & Spiritous Estate of Michael A Padlipsky
> <https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/>
> bill.n1vux at gmail.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
>