Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!ucbvax!A.ISI.EDU!PADLIPSKY
From: PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU (Michael Padlipsky)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Does TCP/IP "comform" to ISO/OSI?
Message-ID: <12425583151.27.PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU>
Date: 26 Aug 88 20:06:49 GMT
References: <5883@nsc.nsc.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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If there were a Supreme Court of Science (and if it hadn't been packed),
I'd be delighted to accept a case which held that the protocol sub-suite
consisting of TCP-or-UDP-over-IP is a more appropriate realization of
stated "OSI" "Reference Model" principles than is the protocol sub-suite
consisting of X.25-and-X.75, on a contingency fee basis.  However, since
as Charles Hedrick rightly observes, "TCP/IP" isn't in the set of
International Standards Organization-sanctioned protocols, and since
"conform to OSI" really ought to connote "interoperate with other protocols/
protocol interpeters in the ISO-sanctioned set", if there were a
Supreme Court of Semantics, I daresay I'd only be willing to attempt
to defend your XYZ Corp.'s blurb on a win-lose-or-draw flat fee basis--
and that a large enough one to be able to retire comfortably on.
(And if I won, I'd be sure that that court was packed.) 

Or, if legal metaphors are not to your taste, a fair way of answering
your question is, "Not in any practical sense, even though a sufficiently
subtle protocol theologian could probably have a lot of fun with it."

   cheers, map

P.S. In case the reference to the "ARM" in Phil Wood's message was
not familiar, it stands for the ARPANET Reference Model, which preexists
the ISO/OSI RM in fact, though not on paper (i.e., the ARM didn't get
written up [or down] until some years after it had been "invented" ...
and used).
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