Austin Group Status Report

hi
For Your Information, the latest Austin Group Status report
details the first steps towards the revision of the joint POSIX
standard. regards Andrew
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Austin Group Status Report                      Austin-268 Page 1 of 1
Submitted by Andrew Josey, The Open Group.              September 24, 2005
                                                                                

The Austin Common Standards Revision Group (CSRG) is a joint technical
working group established to consider the matter of a common revision
of ISO/IEC 9945-1, ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE Std 1003.1, IEEE Std 1003.2 and
the appropriate parts of the Single UNIX Specification. Having completed
the initial deliverable in late 2001, the group is presently working on
maintenance activities including producing two technical corrigenda so
far, and interpretations of the standard. Looking forward, the group has
laid out an initial roadmap for the next revision in document Austin/243
(see note i) and is now commencing on the first part of that roadmap,
the steps are outlined towards the end of this report.

Current efforts continue to focus on stability and maintenance,
with defect report processing being the main work item. 
Regular teleconferences are being  held to review new
defect reports (aardvark).  Since Technical Corrigendum 2 was published,
249 defect reports have been received and are being worked on:
	* Base Definitions volume: 60, 
	* Shell and Utilities volume: 77, 
	* Rationale volume: 6, 
	* System Interfaces volume: 106.
There are approximately 550 participants on
the main mailing list, with 120 participants to the defect reporting
list. There have been over 10000 messages posted to the main mailing lists
since they were established in 1998 (8600+ to the discussion list
and 1900+ to the defect report list).

The first products aligned with the standard have appeared in the
marketplace.  During late 2004 and the first half of 2005 we have seen
availability of four UNIX 03 certified systems (UNIX 03 being a profile
based on the XSI extension of the Base standard) and the first POSIX
certified system.

For the UNIX 03 certification register see
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

For the POSIX(R): Certified by IEEE and The Open Group register see
http://get.posixcertified.ieee.org/register.html

We have also seen several open source projects utilizing test tools
from The Open Group to assess their alignment with the standards, and
the uptake of the documentation within several open source projects
(the Linux Man Pages project and the FreeBSD project).

IEEE and The Open Group have expanded the POSIX
certification program to include certification for systems
implementing IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 Profile PSE54. This will
be supplemented in early 2006 with the addition of certification
for IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 Profile PSE52.

Looking forward, as agreed at the plenary in January 2005 a full revision
of the standard is planned to commence by December 2006.

There are three input streams going into the revision (see note ii):
1. Issues from SD/5 (see note i) ; 2. Interpretations and Closed Defect
Reports ; 3.  External documents proposed to be considered for inclusion.
For item 3, the external documents, the Austin Group is calling for
submissions in principle to be put forward to the group by January 9 2006
(see note iii), they should meet the criteria in Appendix A below.

The revision will be considered at a plenary planning meeting to be held
in the first quarter of 2006 (likely to be February). This will determine
the precise milestones involved for the revision, and consider the
proposals for external documents to be included.  For external documents
that are agreed to be included in principle, a full proposal should be
submitted including detailed editing instructions by July 31 2006.

Further information on the Austin Group can be obtained at
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/faq.html

The online version of the standard can be obtained at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html


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Notes:
(i) Numbered documents and Standing Documents can be
obtained from the Austin Group Document register at
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docreg.html

(ii) A summary diagram is available in Austin/164 to illustrate the input
streams to the next revision.

(iii) Submissions of new material should be submitted to the 
Austin Group Chair.
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Appendix A:

Criteria for Inclusion of new interfaces

The recommended criteria for development of new interfaces to enable
them to be considered for inclusion in a future revision are as follows:

1.There must be a written specification that has undergone a formal
consensus based approval process and is suitable for inclusion.

Parties interested in submitting new work items through one of the
three organizations within the Austin Group (The Open Group, IEEE, ISO/IEC)
should contact the appropriate Organizational Representative for further
information and advice on how each organization handles new work items.
Submissions from other organizations will also be considered.
Items 2 through 4 below apply to all submissions regardless of
origin.

2.There must be an implementation, preferably a reference implementation.

3.The specification must be "sponsored" by one of three organizations 
(The Open Group, IEEE, ISO/IEC) within the Austin Group, i.e. they would support
and champion its inclusion. 

4.Submitters must provide an outline plan of the editing instructions to
merge the document with the Austin Group specifications, and assistance
to the Austin Group editors as required to complete the merger.
For an example, see
http://www.opengroup.org/sophocles/show_mail.tpl?source=L...


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Andrew Josey                                  
Austin Group Chair                          
Email: a.josey(AT)opengroup(dot)org