Project news

15-day public review for Virtual I/O Device (#VIRTIO) V1.0 begins. Ends 14 April

The OASIS Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) TC members [1] have produced an updated Committee Specification Draft (CSD) and submitted this specification for 15-day public review:

Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) Version 1.0
Committee Specification Draft 02 / Public Review Draft 02
11 March 2014

With the release we are testing a convenience option for submitting comments to the Technical Committee. Please see the details under ‘Public Review Period’ below.

Specification Overview:

This document describes the specifications of the “virtio” family of devices. These devices are found in virtual environments, yet by design they are not all that different from physical devices, and this document treats them as such. This allows the guest to use standard drivers and discovery mechanisms.

The purpose of virtio and this specification is that virtual environments and guests should have a straightforward, efficient, standard and extensible mechanism for virtual devices, rather than boutique per-environment or per-OS mechanisms.

This is the second public review draft, incorporating significant feedback on clarity from the first draft.

TC Description:

The TC has spent the past two months processing all the feedback for incorporation into the document. We believe the result is a clearer, crisper draft and welcome further feedback. There are only a small number of changes to the intent of the spec, and these are highlighted at the top of the changelog.

Public Review Period:

The public review starts 31 March 2014 at 00:00 GMT and ends 14 April 2014 at 23:59 GMT. The specification was previously submitted for public review [2]. Due to the extensive number of changes, the complete Committee Specification Draft is open for review.

This is an open invitation to comment. OASIS solicits feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of its technical work.

With this public review, we are testing a new convenience feature for sending comments to the Technical Committee. The file

http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd02/virtio-v1.0-csprd02-COMMENT-TAGS.html

contains the HTML version of the draft with a “[comment?]” link next to each section heading. Clicking on this link will launch your email application and begin a message to virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org with the specific section number and title in the subject line. (For example, “Public review comment for virtio-v1.0-csprd02: 1.3 Terminology.”) Simply enter your comment and click send.

You must be subscribed to the virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list in order to send your comments. Instructions on how to subscribe can be found at https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=virtio.

Note that the Table of Contents doesn’t work in this version and other internal document links may not work in this file. That is one of the items we need fix before making this capability more broadly available. Please feel free to let us know if you find this feature helpful. We plan to refine it and make it a part of our normal public review process.

URIs:
The prose specification document and related files are available here:

Editable source (Authoritative):
http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd02/tex/

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd02/virtio-v1.0-csprd02.html

PDF:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd02/virtio-v1.0-csprd02.pdf

ZIP distribution files (complete):

For your convenience, OASIS provides a complete package of the prose specification and related files in a ZIP distribution file. You can download the ZIP file here:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd02/virtio-v1.0-csprd02.zip

Additional information about this specification and the VIRTIO TC may be found on the TC’s public home page located at:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/virtio/

Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be accessed via the button labeled “Send A Comment” at the top of the TC public home page, or directly at:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/form.php?wg_abbrev=virtio

Feedback submitted by TC non-members for this work and for other work of this TC is publicly archived and can be viewed at:

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/virtio-comment/

All comments submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC members. In connection with this public review of ‘Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) Version 1.0’, we call your attention to the OASIS IPR Policy [3] applicable especially [4] to the work of this technical committee. All members of the TC should be familiar with this document, which may create obligations regarding the disclosure and availability of a member’s patent, copyright, trademark and license rights that read on an approved OASIS specification. OASIS invites any persons who know of any such claims to disclose these if they may be essential to the implementation of the above specification, so that notice of them may be posted to the notice page for this TC’s work.

========== Additional references:

[1] OASIS Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/virtio/

[2] Previous public reviews:
30-day public review, 24 December 2014: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/members/201312/msg00013.html
– Comment resolution log: http://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.0/csprd01/virtio-v1.0-csprd01-comment-resolution-log.xlsx

[3] http://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/ipr

[4] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/virtio/ipr.php
https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/ipr#licensing_req
Non-Assertion Mode