XNS higher level protocols

[Barry Shein]

There was some discussion here citing frustration with the
unavailability of higher level specs for the XNS protocols.

I had the opportunity last year to sit around at PARC and
this subject came up. Essentially the answer is that yes,
they are running various high level protocols internally at
Xerox. The reason the world has not seen the specs was that
they are not very happy with many of the details, much of it
was experimental and they are nervous about allowing these
things to become de facto standards we will all be saddled
with by releasing the specs. Exactly what is being done to
correct this situation wasn't outlined to me but the impression
I got was they were concerned, agreed it is a very fundamental
problem and wished they could get it behind them.

Not much comfort, but at least my impression is that the problem
is a human one, not 'an evil Brand X empire' being overly
proprietary about things (tho Xerox does tend towards that
unfortunately as do most large companies.) Hopefully there has
been some progress in this arena since then, someone from Xerox
wish to elaborate?

	-Barry Shein, Boston University