Re: ICSA

[Crispin Cowan <crispin () cse ogi edu>]

David LeBlanc wrote:

> [warning - USENET flame/quibble mode ON]
>
> At 11:18 AM 1/14/99 -0500, Richard Reiner wrote:
>
> > In brief: Any organization which denominates itself an "Association", but
> > which is in reality a private, for-profit company, seems to me to lose all
> > credibility.  (Were this not a public forum, I would use far stronger terms
> > to say what I think of this practice.)
>
> You say "lose all credibility".  This is pure nonsense, and as a fellow
> Ph.D., I am appalled at your use of such broad terminology.

I dunnow, I found his use of the word pretty precise.  "lose all credibility"
as in "demonstratably willing to mis-represent the truth for their own
purposes."  Works for me.


> Further, I'd be interested in why you think that being a private,
> for-profit company makes them any less or more likely to produce unreliable
> or biased information?

Being a private for-profit company that deliberately gives the appearance of
being a non-profit association is different from being a private for-profit
company and being stand-up about it.


>  Let's
> get realistic here - unless you're willing to go get funding for a
> competing organization and get all the vendors to use your process, then it
> is either ICSA or believe the vendors (yeah, right).

I would rather have nothing at all than an evaluator that claims to be
objective and independent but isn't.  That's worse than "believe the vendors",
that's renting the vendors extra credibility for a price.

Caveat:  I don't actually know the particulars of ICSA and the merrits of their
evaluation.  I HAVE been confused in the past about just exactly what they are,
and when I queried a booth bunny, got a waffly answer that clarified nothing.

Crispin, fellow PhD for what it's worth :-)
-----
 Crispin Cowan, Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science, OGI
    NEW:  Protect Your Linux Host with StackGuard'd Programs  :FREE
       http://www.cse.ogi.edu/DISC/projects/immunix/StackGuard/

                 Support Justice:  Boycott Windows 98