[ih] Gateway Issue: Certification (was Re: booting linux on a 4004)

[Dave Crocker]

On 10/3/2024 10:43 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> It's curious to me that such mechanisms have not been created for the 
> Internet Industry.


Informal interoperability testing, versus formal compliance testing, was 
and remains a key distinction between the Internet's culture and the 
cultures of various other standards organization. Compliance testing is 
typically expensive and incomplete.  (As a tool for initial code 
debugging, tests like that can be efficient; as a guarantee of field 
interoperability, not so much.)

There was a wonderful panel that Vint was on, circa 1990, along with a 
number of other folk, including a vigorous OSI proponent from Boeing.

Vint made his comments about experiences with the Internet's technology 
and specifically noted the reliance on interoperability testing rather 
than (bench) compliance testing.

Other panelists made various comments and then the Boeing person made 
theirs, vigorously asserting that it is not possible to get widespread 
interoperability without formal compliance testing.

It was fun to watch Vint slowly lean slightly forward and then slowly 
turn his head toward the Boeing person.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social