**** On behalf of Ian Foster****

Having read and edited the specification at length, I still do not understand the meaning or purpose of the "container" concept.

I understand that different instantiations of a Basic Execution Service implementation may be configured to create "activities" on different 
computational resources. E.g., one might create activities on a single computer, another might create activities in a Web services container, another 
might dispatch create requests to a parallel computer, another might even dispatch create requests to one or more other BESs.

However, I don't understand what the term "container" refers to in this context. Is the "container":

a) the system component that accepts the incoming requests, decides what to do with them, invokes the appropriate operation(s) on the corresponding 
computational resources to create "activities", maintains state associated with those activities, etc.;

b) the computational resources on which activities are created; or

c) both of the above?

Reading the specification, it seems to me that the answer is supposed to be (b). However, sometimes things read as if (a) is intended.

I raise this issue because I think it relates to this tracker. The term "container" does indeed introduce confusion (IMHO). Thus, why not remove it 
altogether?