[ih] Quantifying OSI

[Bob Purvy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

You (by "you" I mean nearly all the contributors of this list) built
something that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Take a
victory lap. Take ten.

So now you wonder if "more attention to all the other factors" was the
answer. No, it wasn't. Then you'd have been mired in politics.

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 10:43 PM Carl Malamud via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Thanks everybody for your contributions and memories on this thread. Very
> helpful and interesting.
>
> As to the comment about how this discourse is akin to shooting a dead
> horse, I believe we need to learn from history or we will be doomed to
> repeat it, and sometimes that means shooting a dead horse again.
>
> Like many of you, I spent a lot of time looking at OSI. I spent thousands
> of dollars buying specs and many many hours trying to figure out what this
> was all about for my book on Decnet Phase V, a book I now think of as
> "paperware about vaporware." My book on Novell networks certainly sold much
> better.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Carl
>
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 7:58 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Brian,
> >
> > On 5/11/2026 7:17 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > > That's true, but it leaves an impression that the OSI community was
> > > just vapourware, which I don't think is fair.
> >
> > Depending on the moment in time and the qualifications for being actual
> > 'ware', it is absolutely fair.
> >
> > Unless the view is that having even the smallest bit of software of any
> > portion of what is needed makes it not be vaporware.
> >
> > It was touted for 15 years as /the/ solution.  It delivered, at best,
> > small bits of capability -- which I won't honor with the classification
> > of 'utility' -- and never at scale.
> >
> > I suppose X.25 might be considered an exception.  Except that, really,
> > that wasn't OSI in terms of what was promoted.
> >
> >
> >
> > > The OSI vision was *very* attractive to people (like me) trying to run
> > > networking services in a multiprotocol world,
> >
> > Yes.  As I said, it was a very successful marketing campaign.  It did
> > develop market demand.
> >
> >
> >
> > > and by the mid-1980s OSI was (apparently) well specified and ready to
> > > become product.
> >
> > Sorry.  No.  Not by any stretch of operational pragmatics, except,
> > perhaps, at a department level.  And there were many other, better and
> > more mature choices for that market segment.
> >
> > In fact there was a running joke that OSI was repeatedly promised to be
> > ready 'in two years."  I was at a conference in 1990 where Heidi Heiden
> > was speaking and he noted this running promise.  He said that while that
> > unfortunate history was true, OSI really was almost mature enough for
> > production deployment and would be available in 1992.  I, of course, was
> > unable to refrain from shouting out a comment on that.
> >
> >
> >
> > > It was very disappointing that it wasn't actually ready and fit for
> > > purpose when we needed it (which was, roughly speaking, 1989, for the
> > > experiments at LEP, the electron/positron collider). TCP/IP stepped in.
> >
> > 1989 was too late.  As I've noted before, around that time I explored
> > customer needs for transitioning from TCP to OSI and without exception
> > all I heard from our customers was a very strong need for transitions
> > tools in the opposite direction.
> >
> > d/
> >
> > --
> > Dave Crocker
> >
> > dhc at dcrocker.net
> > bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> > mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
> > +1.408.329.0791
> >
> > Volunteer, Silicon Valley Chapter
> > Northern California Coastal Region
> > Information & Planning Coordinator
> > American Red Cross
> > dave.crocker2 at redcross.org
> >
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