On Jun 18, 2009, at 3:47 AM, Supalov, Alexander wrote:

I wonder whether we may want to consider defining a prototype more strictly, say, by adding a couple of qualifiers like "demonstrating the intended functionality and performance potential" or something. This will definitely increase the quality of the prototypes, and may positively influence the quality of the resulting standard, which is after all what all of us are after here. Given that most of the intended MPI-2.2 tickets already appear to have good prototypes, it should not be a problem to clarify the rules a bit here.

Actually, it would be better to make these "ad hoc" rules more definitive. Torsten is the latest in the series of people who have been bitten by thinking that they were acting by the rules but then someone said, "no, the rule is actually ..." Having somewhat subjective rules is fine, but having nebulous, not- written-down, sometimes-seemingly-arbitrary rules is what is causing a problem. How about someone making a shot at writing down exactly what the rules are? Leaving leeway for some subjectivity is fine (and good), but at leaving having *something* to point to when issues come under debate like this would be most helpful -- and will save a lot of time during the MPI-3 process. -- Jeff Squyres Cisco Systems