[ih] Fwd: Fw: Quantifying OSI

[Bob Purvy]

"Quantifying" : this is a good way to approach this. Everyone focuses on
the money, especially from the USG, but there's also "implementation hours":

How many hours did OSI proponents spend actually writing code and getting
networks running? Writing papers and going to meetings doesn't count.

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 8:54 AM Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Others from BBN who worked on the NIST contract to represent "the US
> Government's view" in OSI committees included John Burress (Transport
> Layer), e (Presentation Layer) and Kathy Huber (terminal support in the
> Application Layer, IIRC).  However the majority of our work was done in
> committees of ANSI, where the "US position" was developed.  ANSI meetings
> were roughly every 3 months. Between meetings we developed position papers
> based on input from NIST and from ARPAnet/Internet experience. As part of
> this project Tom Blumer developed a protocol compiler which took in a
> "formal" description of a protocol in a c-like language describing a
> protocol state machine and output a procedure implementing the protocol.
> However, any progress we made in getting the OSI system to resemble the
> good parts of ARPAnet/Internet experiments was summarily dismissed by
> people like Jon Postel, Dave Clark, and Mike Padlisky as "Not Invented
> Here" when we attempted to report back to the ARPAnet/Internet community.
> Ultimately it didn't much matter; the superior funding of implementations
> by ARPA, and the "give it away freely" attitude toward those
> implementations, carried the day.
>
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
> *From:* Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> *To:* Carl Malamud <carl at media.org>
> *Cc:* Carl Malamud via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> *Sent:* Monday, May 11, 2026 at 10:48:43 AM EDT
> *Subject:* Re: [ih] Quantifying OSI
>
> For a chunk of time, NIST funded a bunch of BBN folks to attend including
> Ross Callon (whom, I understand, did a big chunk of the heavy lifting on
> CLNP) and Debbie Deutsch (ASN.1 and I think parts of X.400).  They used to
> meet in the cafeteria periodically to brush up on their (I think French?)
> language skills.
>
> Craig
>
> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 8:29 AM Carl Malamud via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Guessing NIST had a ton of employees going to ISO meetings, perhaps a
> FOIA
> > request (or several) is in order. Imagine they will have copies of
> meeting
> > minutes, enough to start to estimate the number of attendees and number
> of
> > meetings.
> >
> >
>
> --
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
> mailing lists.
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
>
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>