[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Dave Crocker]

On 3/24/2022 4:37 PM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> But we always had trouble with ISO/OSI.  (We also had a lot of stuff at 
> that time that used the overwrought IEEE 802 Ethernet frame header mess 
> with SNAP headers and all.)
> 
> All of that said, however, the ISO/OSI stuff had a lot of really 
> interesting ideas (wrapped in expensive documents filled with 
> indecipherable gibberish and more unnecessary bells and whistles than a 
> circus Calliope.).  

This is a nice summary of the practical realities of that suite.  It was 
always going to be fully ready in a couple of years.  Again and again 
and again.


> I think the IETF's hostile attitude towards ISO/OSI 
> created an atmosphere of auto-rejection in which those ideas were too 
> often ignored.

This is silliness.  Given the amount of national and business support 
the OSI work had, and the constant and aggressive marginalization they 
attempted, for the TCP/IP stuff, any negative 'tone' within the IETF 
community was irrelevant.

And then there is the small fact that the IETF community was more 
helpful to OSI pragmatics than the OSI community was.

Consider the concession to using ASN.1, for SNMP, that you cited, which 
was a bone tossed to appease the CMIP people, in spite of the problems 
using ASN.1 caused.

And, by the way, it was CMOT, rather than CMIP.  Consider the T...

Which points up another example of trying to be helpful.  Namely ISODE, 
which gave OSI apps a place to get field experience, since the OSI 
community could to that at scale.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net