At 1:40 AM -0800 11/1/99, Andy Back wrote:
>was using it. Why does nobody use the lovely ISO stack/applications
>(apart from euro die-hards)? :)
>No flames please.

Because Big Brother/Uncle Sam tried to ram it down everyone's throat with
GOSIP, I think.  It got everyone's backs up and they resisted.

ISO stuff had a reputation for being more complex and less reliable
(mature) than IP at the time.  The email destination addresses they used in
X.400 certainly didn't help.  Once managers started seeing email addresses
like hotz@jpl.nasa.gov and comparing them to the two line gobbledygook of
an ISO address it think the fight was over.  (In my case the latter does
exist, but I can't find what it is at the moment .)

To be fair I have also heard that the complexity of LDAP has become nearly
as bad as X.500 as they have stepped up to handling the situations that
X.500 handles.  And I've heard a cynical evaluation of IPv6 that it was
having a hard time not looking like the ISO stack.

I hope nobody takes this as a flame.  I claim ignorance of the real details.

Signature failed Preliminary Design Review.
Feasibility of a new signature is currently being evaluated.
h.b.hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu