Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/27 CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Doug Hartman/OSF Minutes of the OSF Distributed Computing Environment BOF (DCE) The Open Software Foundation (OSF) hosted a BOF to discuss the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) work by OSF. It was attended by about forty people (see list). Doug Hartman, DCE engineering director, gave a quick tour of the OSF organization, what OSF does, and what DCE is. (See following slides.) The most important points are: o OSF is a research and development cooperative that develops things like Motif, OSF/1, DCE and DME in conjunction with our 300+ members. o DCE is a set of libraries and programs to be used with existing networks and transports to create production-quality distributed systems and applications. o DCE provides services for RPC, multithreading, network security, global naming of objects, and a distributed file system. These services are integrated to provide a consistent foundation. o The DCE specifications will be available from bookstores within a few months. DCE code is licensable now. (Implementations before specifications.) Many companies are planning DCE deployments. o OSF invites IETF attendees to learn more about OSF, DCE, and our other activities. Contact hartman@osf.org for more information. The audience asked a number of good questions throughout the presentation to clarify points or to understand how this information might affect them. Some highlights were: o Question: What about OSI? This doesn't look like OSI, and many OSF members are active in OSI. - Answer: DCE does not replace OSI protocols for use by government organizations and telecomm providers. DCE does address some of the same technology areas, but is more focused on production distributed applications which need high performance, security and interoperability today. OSF is working with standards organizations to give them the benefit of our ``existing practice''; we would be happy to see DCE protocols included in OSI upper layers. (DCE can use OSI lower layers already.) o Question: How are decisions made at OSF? Don't the OSF sponsors 1 get involved? - Answer: OSF members give us input as to what they would like to see us do. We need to cover our costs from license revenue, so we are motivated to meet the needs of our licensees. While the OSF board (including sponsors) initially made the recommendation to pursue interoperability technology in 1988, OSF employees have made the decisions about what that technology would be since then. All OSF members are regularly given the chance to provide their recommendations to us. o Question: How will we proceed with future OSF <-> IETF discussions? - Answer: BOFs sometimes lead to working groups. This does not seem like the right thing for DCE, since the ``DCE Working Group'' is already in place at OSF, where it is called the DCE SIG; it meets about every two months. The most likely course of action at this point is to have OSF work with the Applications Area of the IETF. We would be able to present details about DCE solutions in the areas of RPC, naming, security, and so forth. Attendees Doug Barlow barlow@decwet.dec.com James Beers beers@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu Natan Borshansky natanb@turisc.timeplex.com Randy Butler rbutler@ncsa.uiuc.edu Edward Cande cande@zk3.dec.com John Chang jrc@uswest.com Isaac Choi ichoi@synoptics.com Scott Cossette sdc@concord.com Fran Fadden fran@decvax.dec.com Bill Fardy fardy@ctron.com Kathryn Fuller kathryn@codex.com Fred Glover fglover@zk3.dec.com Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu Steve Hardcastle-Kille s.kille@isode.com Douglas Hartman hartman@osf.org Arthur Lin yalin@srv.pacbell.com Ellen McDermott emcd@osf.org Ed Menze menze@cs.arizona.edu Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu John Murray murray@premenos.sf.ca.us Rina Nathaniel rina!rnd!rndi@uunet.uu.net John Payne jop@wang.com David Perkins dperkins@synoptics.com Kary Robertson kr@concord.com Dan Romascanu dan@lannet.com Henry Sinnreich hsinnreich@mcimail.com Carl Smith cs@eng.sun.com 2 ^L Dean Throop throop@dg-rtp.dg.com Sylvia Tom tom_sylvia@tandem.com John Vollbrecht jrv@merit.edu Justin Walker justin@apple.com Peter Williams p.williams@uk.ac.ucl.cs Joseph Zur zur@fibhaifa.com 3