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More on TOP, LDAP standards process andsubschemasub etc
Jim - I appreciate the logic of your statements - but this does not
really address the issue re the investments of those who contribute to
the standards process, respect the investments and authority in that
process and for those who wish to deploy product that support the
standard.
As we all know, the less informed customer will always say "do you
interoperate with xxxxx" If you answer no - then its Out. If you answer
yes - then one has to bear the cost of realigning and corrcting the mess
as well as fix problems that can be associated with xxxx.
Most suppliers and customers do not mind the effort involved to get
interoperable products when the intent of the supplier(s) is to align to
the or "a" standard. However, when the supplier has dramatically
changed the ground rules and corrupted the standard definitions of
information, then this situation has to be dealt with at source.
As an industry professional working in the (directory and security)
standards process do not believe in propagating into a customer
environment a costly information system mess.
I can only assume those that chose to do this - have different views
about their customers.
I do not believe in institutionalising this issue in that the illegal
use of standard information identifiers is dealt with in customer
environments. But they are just my values.
regards alan
The views presented are my own and not that of my employer.
----------
From: Jim Sermersheim
To: M.Wahl@INNOSOFT.COM; d.w.chadwick@iti.salford.ac.uk;
ietf-ldapext@netscape.com
Sent: 7/10/99 10:17:02 AM
Subject: Re: Tw bobs worth on TOP, LDAP standards process
andsubschemasub entry attribute usage in rootDSE
To make an analogy to politics, the IETF seems like a legislative system
not a judiciary or law enforcement system.
If directory vendors and directory enabled application vendors join
together to publish an interoperability certification program, Giant B
might be swayed to conform since Minion A will (hopefully) require
conformance. http://www.directoryforum.org/ is where that work is
starting to take shape. To me, this looks more like the judiciary
system needed to brand a directory as naughty or nice.
Jim
>>> "David Chadwick" <d.w.chadwick@iti.salford.ac.uk> 7/9/99 5:18:21 PM
>>>
Mark,
Your long message was very informative and comprehensive (so I
have not reproduced it below). But unfortunately you have indicated
that nothing can really be done about a manufacturer (if one
happened to exist) that:
i) says in all its marketing blurb that it supports LDAP, because it
knows that everyone wants this
ii) purposefully ensures that its LDAP implementation will not
interwork with all the other ones that are around
iii) manages to get the largest market share because it bundles its
LDAP software with other software that already has a large market
share
iv) consequently forces everyone else to follow it in its non
conformant implementation, as simple minded customers dont really
care who is following the standard or not, they just want Minion A to
interwork with Giant B.
In the end the IETF re-write the standard to agree with Giant B, as
everyone now does it this way anyway, so Giant B then changes its
implementation to be non-conformant again, as Giant B does not
really like standards other than its own.
I'm glad we dont have any giants like B around here :-)
David
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