From Bob_Mathis@compuserve.com Mon Jul 28 18:41:18 1997 Received: from arl-img-7.compuserve.com (arl-img-7.compuserve.com [149.174.217.137]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id SAA21160 for ; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 18:41:16 +0200 Received: (from mailgate@localhost) by arl-img-7.compuserve.com (8.8.6/8.8.6/2.2) id MAA01925; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 12:40:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 12:39:48 -0400 From: Bob Mathis Subject: Minutes June 30 JSG Meeting To: Java Study Group Cc: Bill Rinehuls Message-ID: <199707281239_MC2-1BBB-1DD2@compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline The following slightly revised minutes were prepared by Rex Jaeschke and incorporate the two corrections posted. I am forwarding them to the SC22 Secretariat as the final minutes of the meeting. Bob Mathis, Convener SC2/JSG SC22 Java(TM) Study Group (JSG) Meeting Minutes BSI, London, U.K. June 30, 1997 Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Monday June 30 1. Commencement The meeting commenced at 9:30 with the convener, Bob Mathis, as chair. = 2. Local Arrangements Bob introduced Jean Stride, BSI meeting coordinator, who explained the local facilities. = 7. Introduction of Attendees The following people were in attendance: Convener SC22 JSG Bob Mathis Austria Martin Schoenhacker (HoD) Canada Tim Boreham Simon Tooke (HoD) Finland Petri Mahonen (HoD) France Pierre Parquier (HoD) Japan Toshiaki Kurokawa (HoD) Shinichi Niho Norway Magnus Alvestad (HoD) U.K. Ian Brackenbury Mike Curtis Alex Fiennes Francis Glassborow Lois Goldthwaite Kevlin Henney Derek Jones (HoD) Neil Martin U.S. John Benito Frank Farance Gary Fisher Rob Gingel Roger Golliver Rex Jaeschke Scott Jameson (HoD) Dmitry Lenkov Randy Meyers Kevin Miller Tom Plum George Willingmyre Other U.S. Pete Smith Fred Tydeman Philip White SC24 Liaison David Duke Ivan Herman Jean Stride CEC Liaison Ken Thompson 3. Approval of Agenda We will need a drafting committee to work on any resolutions. 4. Appointment of meeting secretary Rex Jaeschke volunteered to take the minutes. = 5. Review of previous minutes The minutes from the Cupertino, California, meeting held in January 1997 (mail message 273) were accepted without change. 6. Review of Action Items All were completed or withdrawn as follows: Rex Jaeschke * Distribute the meeting minutes - done * Refine the technical issues list procedures - withdrawn Bob Mathis * Forward our statement to JavaSoft - done * Establish a date and host for an April meeting - withdrawn * Respond to MHEG - done * Respond to ECMA TC39 - done * Write a short summary of the meeting for general release - done Derek Jones IST5-53, UK Java Panel * Investigate BSI's hosting of a June meeting in the UK - done 8. Reports of National Member Bodies 8.1. Heads of Delegation present Austria Martin Schoenhacker Canada Simon Tooke Finland Petri Mahonen France Pierre Parquier Japan Toshiaki Kurokawa Norway Magnus Alvestad U.K. Derek Jones U.S. Scott Jameson 8.2. Austria - Voted YES. We voted Yes on accepting them as PAS submitter= s, since we are willing to look at any proposed standards they wish to submit. 8.3. France - Voted NO with comments. Prefer that the various parts of Java standardization be done in the same group, however, if done in separate groups they should meet together. Want the name `Java' in the name of the standard(s). Having Sun do the maintenance is unacceptable. Prefer a more traditional approach to standardization such as the NWI-FCD process. = 8.4. USA - A new technical committee, J22, was formed in May as the U.S. TAG. (see email 439) The US voted NO with comments as reported on the reflector. = 8.5. Canada - Abstain with comments. 8.6. U.K. - no vote has been taken yet. No indication given on what that vote might be. 8.7. Japan - The vote will be taken today. Recommendation has been YES with comments. 8.8. Finland - Probably NO vote. 8.9. Netherlands - Unofficially reported that a NO vote is expected. 8.10. Norway - Voted NO with comments. 9. Liaisons 9.1. SC24 Ivan Herman reported that if the core technology makes it through the PAS= phase, it is presumed that Sun might want to use that process for other APIs including those of interest to SC24. 9.2. SC29 SC29/WG12 deals with multimedia and wants to incorporate references to Sun's Java specification (as reported at the January 1997 meeting). They want rapid action, so they want the PAS process to succeed. = 9.3. European Community Has no policy on Java specifically. They are very much in favor of an international standards process that can respond quickly. = 9.4. ECMA TC-39 See item 10 below. = 9.5. IEEE Internet Practices Study Group Nothing to report. 10. ECMA-262 (previously known as JavaScript/ECMA Script/LiveScript) 10.1. Report from ECMA General Assembly meeting George Willingmyre reported on the General assembly held last week. Currently called ECMA Script with a final name yet to be determined, hopefully at the July '97 meeting. The lack of a name is holding up the formal process. The document won't be forwarded to JTC1 until after September '97. The document is done and available for download, from www.ecma.ch. 10.2. JSG Reaction/Discussion/Action The issue of conformance arose and there was some discussion. 10.3. Technical issues None 10.4. Recommendations to SC22 & JTC1 The drafting committee was asked to work on wording for JSG's continued existence, the handling of ECMA-262, and the handling of Java. 10.5. Future JSG activities in this area The future of JSG will be determined at the August 1997 plenary. JSG or its successor should decide whether ECMA-262 is of interest to it and if not, where responsibility for it should lie. The U.S. can support that any ballot resolution be handled by JSG. However, it does not support that the on-going work be assigned to SC22/JSG. Canada supports this and expects that JSG (or its successor) will be more= focused and that ECMA-262 may well be a distraction to JSG's primary interests. There were no objections to the positions put forth by the U.S. The convener appointed Scott Jameson to head a drafting committee to draf= t related resolutions. 11. Java-Related Issues 11.1. Should all Java-related standards activities be in a single group? What are the implications of JTC1 reorganization, Sun's PAS application, and activities of other groups? There ensued a discussion of how best to carve up the tasks: Keep language, core libraries, and JVM tightly coupled. = Don't want separate standards for these unless they come from the same committee; otherwise, problems there are problems with coordination (e.g.= , impact on JVM with respect to enhancements of the language). JSG should state firmly that it wants to have these three. We could debate this for a long time, however, the bottom line is that it will depend on what Sun ultimately submits. Can we afford to wait for Sun? In fact, might we inform Sun of what we perceive the industry wants/needs? The JVM needs to be targetable by languages other than Java, so perhaps it should be dealt with separately from the language specification. Considering the JVM as a general-purpose VM makes the problem more complicated; perhaps we should start out thinking of it from a Java-only perspective without making it more difficult for other languages to target. Yes, we should make a statement about possible organization. 11.2. Sun's proposal to be recognized as a PAS submitter Should we make an official statement re this? No, we've already indicated our respective positions via the National Bod= y votes. What more could we add? If we all agree, it won't hurt to issue a statement; however, there seems= to be no benefit in doing so. Maintenance must be handled by a standards group. The name `Java' needs to be available to the community for use in conformance testing. 11.3. Scope (from our perspective) of the Java standards effort There was no discussion on this. 11.4. Liaisons with other JTC1 subcommittees and working groups As in January, 1997, we are open to liaise with interested groups. There's nothing more to do right now. 11.5. Immediate reactions to SC22, and thus JTC1, about Sun' application to become a PAS submitter (ballot closes July 14) We had no value-added contributions to make in this regard. 11.6. Contingency planning and discussion A lengthy discussion ensued regarding as to what plans, if any, we can make for future meetings. Clearly, our future relies heavily on the outcome of the PAS submission vote and the content and completeness of an= y subsequent technical submissions. 12. Other potential activities 12.1. Collection of technical contributions, error reports and/or interpretations There was no support for doing work along these lines. 12.2. Roly Perera's work (530) Nothing to do here. 12.3. Conformance testing = The U.S. National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) will host a = Conformance Testing Workshop on September 11-12 (Thu-Fri), in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. 12.4. JVM error reporting There was a brief mention of the efforts by the University of Washington in the U.S. with respect to their `High Integrity Java' efforts in security testing. 13. Discussion of Report to the SC22 Plenary The Convener's Draft Report (see email 516) was discussed with several suggested improvements being made. It was decided to make this a report o= f JSG as a whole rather than simply a convener's report. 14. Other Items The following issues were mentioned in passing with no suggestions that w= e address them further: ANDF, ActiveX, AT&T Inferno, IBM's Universal Virtual Machine, and Microsoft/Colusa OmniVM. = 15. Next Meeting Planning With so many variables, it was determined we could not make definite plan= s for another meeting. = 16. Resolutions R-1: ECMA-262 JSG recommends that, if SC22 is assigned ballot resolution for the fast track of ECMA-262, JSG serve as the ballot resolution group for the fast track ballot. R-2: ECMA-262 JSG recommends that, if SC22 is assigned responsibility for ECMA-262, SC2= 2 rely on ECMA's TC39 for maintenance and revision, and not establish an SC22 Working Group for this standard. R-3: JTC1/SC22 Whereas JSG believes that the Java language, Java Virtual Machine, = and core APIs are very interrelated, JSG recommends to SC22: * That SC22 seek the responsibility for the initial PAS submissions based= on Sun's pending application. * That JSG should be the ballot resolution group for Sun's initial Java submission(s). Whereas some National Bodies have requested that future maintenance of Ja= va be done within JTC1, JSG recommends to SC22 that JSG be assigned future maintenance of any standard(s) assigned to SC22 based on these initial submission(s). R-4: JTC1/SC22 JSG recommends that SC22 continue the Java Study Group for another year. R-5: Thanks to the host JSG thanks BSI for their hospitality and meeting support. 17. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 17:30.