Re: ECN review is tough.

[Richard Baek <rbaekvtm@teleport.com>]

Dear Nakamura-san,
I regret that the 30 day period is too short for your company to review the
documents.  When the by laws of the PCI SIG were written, it was agreed by
a majority of the companies that 30 days of review is sufficient to comment
on  the documents.  The 30 day review cycle was established long before web
sites were commonly used in our industry, but with the use of our web site
we've been able to offer much longer than 30 days for review in actuality.
In fact, we've found that posting documents while still in "draft" form for
an informal review is also very useful as it was done with some of other
specs earlier in 1997 before it is even considered for a formal review.
(By the way, the dates you see on the ECNs are the ECR origination dates
and are not the dates that the ECRs turned into ECNs.)

In addition, these ECNs have been available for download from the "members
only" section of the PCI SIG web site for quite sometime.  Mr. Warren
Questo, the Chairman of the PCI SIG, made an announcement to the members
via this reflector on December 2, 1997 letting everyone know that the ECNs
are available for review.  The only ECN which was not available at that
time is the Max Retry ECN.  (The intensive drawings took a bit longer for
proper *.PDF conversion and this was posted as soon as it was available.)
As result, everyone actually had significantly more than the formal 30 days
for review.  I regret that you were not aware of these documents being
available on our web site.

The purpose of the hard copy mailed to all of the members is to uphold the
agreement of membership as outlined in the PCI SIG by-laws.  In actuality,
the review period has evolved with the convenience of a web site such that
most of the "real" review is done electronically and the "formal" review is
done via postal mail to be official.  Since the PCI SIG members are present
world wide, we understand that there is a delay in mailing overseas.  As
result, we do have a "pad" built into our review cycle such that all the
members are guaranteed minimum of 30 days.

Once again, I regret that you were not aware of these ECNs being available
much earlier.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to
contact me anytime at 503-297-5090, Fax 503-297-1090 or e-mail
rbaekvtm@teleport.com.

Best regards,

Rich Baek
PCI Special Interest Group



At 09:54 PM 2/19/98 +0900, T.Nakamura wrote:
>Dear all members,
>
>I got four ECNs in an envelope. It's very tough to review them in 30 days.
>Why doesn't PCI SIG send each ECN as soon as it becomes ready?
>Are they saving postage?
>I want to hear opinions from you.
>
>Best regards,
>Takashi Nakamura
>Yokogawa Electric Corporation
>
>
>