Subject: IPP> ? on IPP direction concerning XML

From: Carl-Uno Manros <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 23:32:50 -0700

Frank,

Sorry if my earlier reply was a bit short and did not give the full story.
I will make a new attempt:

Officially, people working within the framework of the IETF only represent
themselves as invidual experts, rather than the organization they happen
to work for....

Having said that, it is clear that we will not get a standard successfully
implemented unless the heavyweights support it. As chair of the group, I 
always have to make sure that we achieve good technical solutions as well 
as get majority support for these solutions.

It is correct that a couple of experts, that happen to work for MS, did
bring in a last minute rethink about how the IPP protocol encoding could
be done. After intensive discussion within the group, a considerable
majority felt that the new approach did not offer enough of an improvement
to spend another 6 months or more to re-engiener the current solution,
which by the way, had been heavily influenced by one of the experts that
now had a different idea.

As a result, the group decided to pass on the existing final drafts to the 
IESG for ratification. Experts from MS and HP made no secret of the fact
that they would make use of the rights, that any expert has, to suggest to 
the IESG to once more consider their proposal. As I indicated in my earlier
response, the IESG is still pondering whether to pass the final drafts as
is, or ask the group to do further changes to the drafts before they get 
IESG approval. During the waiting period, some people like Jay Martin
started speculating about what would happen if MS and HP decided not to
support IPP. In response to that, experts from both MS and HP sent
messages to the list confirming that they had no intension of splitting
the market and would adhere to the version that gets approved by the IESG.

If you happen to be a subscriber to the NT 5.0 betas, you can convince 
yourself about where these guys are right now.

In correspondance with the editor of Hard Copy Observer, I have pointed out 
that although he has most of his facts correct, he has drawn the wrong 
conclusions and raised red flags, when in reality we keep on doing our work
in the group in a highly cooperative and friendly atmosphere. 

In standards work, everybody wins a few and loses a few, otherwise we would 
never get any standards.

Hope this gives you no more sleepless nights.

Carl-Uno

At 02:32 PM 4/27/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Carl-Uno in general I agree with your statement to "Don't believe 
>everything you read in the press" but the article has disturbing 
>quotes (see below) from sources within IPP subgroup.  If it is the 
>case that these are misquotes then sorry for the extra traffic but, if 
>these are true issues I have real concerns for the future of IPP.  The 
>article goes on to say that MS and HP seem willing to abide by 
>whatever IPP standard is adopted.  As you are skeptical of the Press 
>I'm just as skeptical of Microsoft "abiding" by an outside bodies 
>decisions.
>
>Please help me to understand this....
>
>Frank Mason
>