Dear members of the KMIP TC.
Thanks
again for allowing us to make some specific suggestions about handling
of the RSA interop demo event issues, as discussed at your meeting
last week.
My
colleagues Carol Geyer (in charge of all OASIS events) and Chet Ensign (who you know as our TC Administrator) will join us at your meeting on Thursday, to share their suggestions, answer questions within the time available,
and also listen to the concerns of the members of the TC. We respectfully ask Judy and Tony to place us near the front of the agenda, for this meeting, so that there's adequate time for questions afterwards if desired.
What we hope is clear so far is that OASIS staff believes:
- You will
easily be able to conduct a proper formal interop demo again at RSAc in April 2018. as you have in previous years, if you wish to do so. This would require that the TC adopt a
resolution with your proposed test plan and local rules, fairly soon, as we discussed last week.
- The TC also would be
entitled to conduct a less-structured, non-test-oriented "showcase" at the
2018 RSAc event, if the majority of its members prefer that, feel that a formal test
is inappropriate this next year. OASIS staff will be happy to support whichever style of event you elect.
- To help differentiate between those options, I also am sending over (separately) a marked-up copy of your November 2016 plan, used for the February 2017 RSAc. My markup attempts to illustrate the few, but only a few, places where policy issues may need re-examination. (I believe your TC usually updates and re-uses the prior year's plan, so I used last year's. If I should have started from a different plan for 2018 that's already been prepared, I apologize that I haven't seen one.)
- As we discussed last week, one apparent point of dispute is whether ejections from the show floor are a necessary component of a formal test.
As you know, at least one company believes they are necessary, while OASIS staff views
that approach as problematic, and likely to be relatively unattractive to most
participants (which explains our Feb. 2017 policy update). However,
we have been asked by our Board to collect your individual and collective inputs on this issue as
well. - Both my markup of last
year's test rules, and Carol Geyer's presentation on Thursday (also sent separately), will
attempt to answer the TC's question "what other options do we have" in
more concrete detail. We hope that's helpful.
Let me also apologize to you that, from OASIS HQ, we have not successfully been able to spur this conversation earlier. As a personal opinion, I think as staff we've let you down by not driving a discussion of alternative approaches with the entire TC earlier
this fall, rather than just interacting with one company on the issue.
We haven't heard from the TC until last week on this topic: but also, we didn't come to you earlier, and I
personally apologize for our part in not initiating these issues with the TC sooner. Frankly, OASIS staff is comfortable with and used to TCs that operate with a great deal of independence, and usually they (including KMIP) take care of
themselves quite well with only light staff input. But in this case, we may have taken too much for
granted, and failed to consult enough with multiple stakeholders and instigate earlier TC-wide discussions about testing policy options and your preferences.