Reuse of IEEE Content in Vendor Documentation 3 November 2004 Dr. Katherine L. Morse SISO SAC Vice-Chair morsek@saic.com 1

Issue Statement As with all software standards, developing products that are both conformant with the standard and useable by customers requires reproduction of some portions of the standard APIs with their parameters Message and table formats IEEE’s current position is that they’re willing to consider allowing vendors to reproduce this type of information in software, manuals, and help files without royalties Other sources for standards’ applications comes from vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, …) and other standards organizations (OMG, IETF, …) that offer various interoperability/connectivity solutions SISO SAC recommends that IEEE align their policies on software standards and royalties according to industry standards to support interoperability and development based on recognized standards At a minimum, SISO SAC is seeking approval for vendors to use specific material as described in this briefing 2

How the Content Would be Used For the purpose of: Product use and documentation As comments in sample federates (HLA-compliant simulations) and sample DIS-compliant applications Teaching material Within: Commercial, GOTS, and shareware products/offerings, some of which will be freely available on the web Support pages Introductory pages about HLA In “light” product versions that can be downloaded for free 3

Use of IEEE Content from the Federate Interface Specification (1516 Use of IEEE Content from the Federate Interface Specification (1516.1) in HLA Products and Documentation APIs in C++ and Java header files The order and type of the parameters have to be reproduced in some of the files for the RTI in order for users to be able to compile application files and to link with the RTI libraries I/F Spec APIs in RTI manuals and online help For the APIs, copying them verbatim is the only thing that provides value Knowing that an API exists without knowing the order, type, and meaning of the parameters doesn't provide a user enough information to use the API Users need semantic descriptions of each RTI service in order to know how to use an HLA implementation Standardization of symbols such as exceptions is only valuable when that exact text is used by all vendors 4

Example: HLA 1.3 Headers in Include Files 5

Example: HLA 1.3 JavaDoc 6

Example: Documentation for an HLA 1.3 RTI Includes Standards as PDFs 7

OMT table formats in object modeling tool manuals and online help Use of IEEE Content from the Object Model Template (OMT) (1516.2) in HLA Products and Documentation OMT table formats in object modeling tool manuals and online help The HLA splits the APIs from the data model; the OMT is the format of the data model The OMT table formats are roughly in the same category as data packet formats In order to benefit from a standardized table structure across tool vendors, all vendors must be able to express the tables as they are defined. Without this exception, vendors cannot use the standardized tables and elements Changing their names would still leave them open to “copying of the gestalt” liabilities 8

OMT Example - Object Class Structure Table 9

Object Model Development Tool Example 10

Use of DIS Content Section 5 describing the PDU layout is the most relevant for use in Product documentation Comments in sample DIS applications Teaching material 11

Example of of a PDU Layout in a User-Extensible DIS-HLA Adapter struct EntityStatePdu { PduHeaderRecord pduHeader; EntityIdRecord entityId; unsigned __int8 forceId; unsigned __int8 numberOfArticulationParameters; EntityTypeRecord entityType; EntityTypeRecord alternativeEntityType; VelocityRecord entityLinearVelocity; WorldLocationRecord entityLocation; OrientationRecord entityOrientation; unsigned __int32 entityAppearance; DeadReckoningParametersRecord deadReckoningParameters; EntityMarkingRecord entityMarking; unsigned __int32 capabilities; }; 12

Summary Restricting the use of this material negatively impacts the usability of tools compliant with the standards, reducing acceptance of the standards by users Approval of this request improves the marketability of compliant products, increasing the market for the standards This issue applies to IEEE 1516 and IEEE 1278 13