[CMC] Re: After Adrian's comments.

[Adrian J. Hooke]

At 11:15 AM 7/29/2004, Eduardo Bergamini wrote:
>2) If it is accepted that CCSDS has a firm agreement with ISO which, in 
>turn, has formally been accepting CCSDS  Recommendations as inputs, with 
>the actual meaning of Recommendations for Standards for, yes, transforming 
>them in
>International Standards of their own, in this way, benefiting from the 
>very (world-)wide ISO domain;

I wonder if we can find the correspondence between CCSDS and ISO that led 
to the establishment of SC13 in 1990? Very clearly, at that point, they 
accepted that CCSDS was a legitimate international standardization body and 
there has never been any question that this is so. I will ask Mac Reid (who 
led the negotiation) if he has copies in his possession.

>RESOLUTION: <...To be written, in a solid and precise phrasing, justifying 
>that, from now on, CCSDS will be primarily dedicated to the generation of 
>Recommendations for Standards, being primarily aimed to, in this order: 1) 
>Its Member Agencies; 2)ISO ; 3) Observer Agencies; 4) Liaisons and 
>Associates, and; 5)Others, at large; Considering that the just mentioned 
>organization categories 3 to 5 are totally free to adopt CCSDS 
>Recommendations for Standards, only as an option, open to all of them... 
>Otherwise, Member Agencies continue to be -strongly- urged to adopt them, 
>in their own domain...>

The key thing here is first to review the "STATEMENT OF INTENT" that is 
always at the front of every Blue Book. At present it reads as follows:
______________________
STATEMENT OF INTENT
The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is an 
organization officially established by the management of member space 
Agencies. The Committee meets periodically to address data systems problems 
that are common to all participants, and to formulate sound technical 
solutions to these problems. Inasmuch as participation in the CCSDS is 
completely voluntary, the results of Committee actions are termed 
Recommendations and are not considered binding on any Agency.
This Recommendation is issued by, and represents the consensus of, the 
CCSDS Plenary body. Agency endorsement of this Recommendation is entirely 
voluntary. Endorsement, however, indicates the following understandings:
o       Whenever an Agency establishes a CCSDS-related standard, this 
standard will be in accord with the relevant Recommendation. Establishing 
such a standard does not preclude other provisions which an Agency may 
develop.
o       Whenever an Agency establishes a CCSDS-related standard, the Agency 
will provide other CCSDS member Agencies with the following information:
--      The standard itself.
--      The anticipated date of initial operational capability.
--      The anticipated duration of operational service.
o       Specific service arrangements shall be made via memoranda of 
agreement. Neither this Recommendation nor any ensuing standard is a 
substitute for a memorandum of agreement.
No later than five years from its date of issuance, this Recommendation 
will be reviewed by the CCSDS to determine whether it should: (1) remain in 
effect without change; (2) be changed to reflect the impact of new 
technologies, new requirements, or new directions; or, (3) be retired or 
canceled.
In those instances when a new version of a Recommendation is issued, 
existing CCSDS-related Agency standards and implementations are not negated 
or deemed to be non-CCSDS compatible.  It is the responsibility of each 
Agency to determine when such standards or implementations are to be 
modified.  Each Agency is, however, strongly encouraged to direct planning 
for its new standards and implementations towards the later version of the 
Recommendation
___________________________

The first question is: if we changed the word "Recommendation" in the above 
paragraphs to "Recommended Standard", would anything be impacted? In my 
opinion, absolutely nothing would change but we would have achieved exactly 
what we want, namely to state that these are not just "recommendations", 
but "recommended standards".

I therefore propose that any Resolution should be along the lines of 
changing the concrete Blue Book boilerplate in the "STATEMENT OF INTENT".

>You brought up another issue which, if I understood, is legitimaly related 
>to the historical heritage and "patrimony" of CCSDS. ...  We are fortunate 
>that we have Bob, Merv, Horst, Creasey, Warren and certainly others, 
>"around". I suggest that you, as CESG, may consider a formal proposal to 
>CMC on the subject

I have already heard back from Horst Kummer, who was the first Chairman of 
CCSDS Panel 1 and who shepherded the famous "Darmstadt Agreement" where we 
first nailed down an international standard for Packet Telemetry. He 
basically locked us up in a room at ESOC and wouldn't let us get to the 
beer until we had consensus. He was the ESOC lead person in those days, but 
ESTEC (Michel Pellet, who later died of cancer) provided the overall ESA 
management lead role. Here's what Horst says:

>Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 04:40:45 -0400
>From: "H.Kummer" <HorstKummer at compuserve.com>
>Subject: Fwd: [CMC] CCSDS background
>Sender: "H.Kummer" <HorstKummer at compuserve.com>
>To: "Adrian J. Hooke" <Adrian.J.Hooke at jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>Hallo Adrian,
>
>you certainly remember that CCSDS grew out of the NASA-ESA working group 
>on Telecommunication (or whatever the formal title of this body was). 
>After the two organisations had worked bilaterally for some years (mainly 
>Hooke vs. Uhrig) we invited the other national organisations to contribute 
>to our "recommendations for standards" -work. An agreement was established 
>between the international and national space agencies, however I do not 
>think that this was in accordance with any rules which are normally 
>followed for the establishing of international treaties, or what ever you 
>may call them. At
>least on the ESA side, I cannot remember that we bothered our lawyers with 
>this agreement, although on the NASA side there was for some time a 
>relatively pretty female legal adviser sitting in the meetings. I believe 
>there was some effort on the NASA side to formalize things, but I do not 
>remember any details. I am quite prepared to look into my archive when I 
>return home in about 10 days.
>
>With my best regards,
>Horst

The lady was Joan Egolf, of the NASA International Affairs office. She was 
assigned to work along with Bob Stephens (the NASA program manager in the 
old Code-T) to observe the formation of CCSDS and to make sure that 
everything was legal. Horst is not quite right about "Hooke vs. Uhrig": the 
prime mover was in fact Richard Creasey of ESTEC, who I had met while I was 
working for ESA in 1976-77 and who was the big ESA proponent of Packet 
Telemetry. Hans Uhrig was the ESOC guy, but I think that *everyone* had fun 
technically arguing with Hans, not just me! .... ;-)

Best regards
Adrian
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