RE: Refering to X.500 editions

["Slone, Skip" <skip.slone@lmco.com>]

Kurt & Kathy,

I finally got a definitive answer on this issue, and the answer has two
parts.  First, according to the ITU, X.500 second edition (1993) will
continue to be available in electronic form only. (That is, it will no
longer be available in printed form, but I'm not sure who cares.) The second
part is that it will definitely NOT be maintained -- only the current
edition (4th - 2001) and one previous (3rd - 1997) are still under
maintenance. Said another way, there will be no more defect reports
processed against the second edition.

It is probably worth noting that each specification in the fourth edition
has the following introductory text:

"This fourth edition technically revises and enhances, but does not replace,
the third edition of this Recommendation | International Standard.
Implementations may still claim conformance to the third edition. However,
at some point, the third edition will not be supported (i.e. reported
defects will no longer be resolved). It is recommended that implementations
conform to this fourth edition as soon as possible."

Further, the latest version of the Implementor's Guide (V14) contains the
following text:

"Note:   This version applies to the 2nd (1993|1995), 3rd (1997|1998), and
4th (2000/2001) editions of the ITU-T. X.500-series Recommendations and the
ISO/IEC 9594 International Standards. It includes all approved and draft
corrigenda to the three editions. Readers still using the 1st (1988|1990)
edition are advised to keep version 9 of the Directory Implementor's Guide
as this is the last version that contains corrections to the 1st edition
text. This version will be the last implementor's guide for the 2nd edition.
Readers still using the 2nd edition are advised to keep this document."

If LDAP will continue to reference the second edition, implementors should
make note of those last two sentences.

Hope this helps. If there are any further questions, please let me know.

  -- Skip

-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt D. Zeilenga [mailto:Kurt@OpenLDAP.org] 
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 3:35 PM
To: Slone, Skip
Cc: 'Kathy Dally'
Subject: RE: Refering to X.500 editions


At 11:30 AM 4/20/01, Slone, Skip wrote:
>I'm not sure of the answers to these questions.  I will follow up with 
>Hoyt and report back.

The primary issue from my perspective is to ensure that
the referenced material is available.  If both ITU and
ISO where to stop making the 2nd edition available,
I'd be concerned that we'd have a dangling reference.

I'd be interested in hearing what you find out from Hoyt.