[ih] Quantifying OSI

[Brian E Carpenter]

Yes, there was *enormous* expenditure by major companies worldwide that thought OSI was the key to the future. IBM had people working on SNA/OSI integration (including marketing vapourware), both in the US (Research Triangle Park) and Europe (La Gaude). DEC (mainly at Littleton, MA) invested many millions in DECNET Phase V. Boeing also spent millions, I'm sure; I have no knowledge about GM. Untold numbers of companies spent both marketing and development millions under the influence of US-GOSIP, UK-GOSIP, European Commission policy, etc. Not to mention startups who thought OSI was an enormous future opportunity. I imagine that this was largely limited to North America, Western Europe and Japan, but it certainly included a lot more than sending people to meetings. I have no idea how to estimate the total but I suspect the correct unit is probably the gigadollar.

The emerging national research and education networks in Europe also spent large fractions of their budgets on OSI preparedness - probably much less money than industry was spending, but real enough, between about 1985 and the early 1990s. The same went for NASA and DoE in the US.

Standards goers and their fine lunches and dinners were probably quite a small fraction of the real total cost.

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 12-May-26 08:43, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> Our company (Epilogue Tech.) was involved with ISO/OSI mostly via the
> MAP and TOP efforts by General Motors and Boeing.
> 
> Those gatherings tended to be somewhat well attended, although I don't
> think many of the attendees were people who actually implemented things.
> 
>           --karl--
> 
> On 5/11/26 3:46 AM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> That would be hard to calculate for the US. There were 5 OSI main committees each with 15 - 20 or more participants in various subgroups. In the US, US corporations paid for the time and travel of their participants. Some companies (IBM, Honeywell, ATT, etc) would have multiple participants in the same committee. There were multiple US meetings between major international meetings every 9 months and international sub-group meetings between the 9 month major meetings.
>>
>> The cost was all paid by the companies participating. In addition, there were 802 meetings that were feeding into the OSI work. This was especially true of how network management was gotten off the dime to get around IBM stonewalling. All other 802 standards were process by an ISO committee, because some countries saw IEEE as a US organization.
>>
>> I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at how many people or companies were participating from the US. The Europeans did complain sometimes abut the large US delegations to the meetings.
>>
>> Take care,
>> John Day
>>
>>
>>
>>> On May 10, 2026, at 23:53, Carl Malamud via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi -
>>>
>>> I’m trying to quantify the size of the OSI efforts. I’ve seen the 25
>>> million ECU investment by the EU, and have some pointers to US government
>>> efforts. Has anybody tried to collect these numbers?
>>>
>>> Also very interested in non-monetary indicators. I have easy access to
>>> number of IETF participants and count the traffic on mailing lists. Any
>>> similar metrics for OSI? The best indicator so far is “many fine lunches
>>> and dinners” but surely there has to be something more scientific.
>>>
>>> With best regards,
>>>
>>> Carl
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