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

[Brian E Carpenter]

There's a variant of Godwin's law something like: "As an online
discussion of Internet history grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving OSI approaches 1."

OSI people were very keen on formal conformance testing and
certification. It was supposed to be one of the great benefits
of formal specifications, state diagrams, and the like. Consultants
made good money out of it.

Over here, we had rough consensus and running code.

We know what happened.

But it's true that the IETF has repeatedly failed to solve the
problem that Dave identified ("know exactly which RFCs they need
to implement"). See the following URL to appreciate the problem:
https://github.com/becarpenter/book6/blob/main/20.%20Further%20Reading/RFC%20bibliography.md

     Brian

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 04-Oct-24 06:54, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> 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/
>