Thanks for sharing the history,
Regards,
Ted
On Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 5:02 PM Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 26-Jun-19 11:12, Ted Hardie wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 3:19 PM Mike StJohns <mstjohns@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:mstjohns@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 1:39 PM Randy Bush <randy@xxxxxxx <mailto:randy@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> For those who have not had to look it all up recently, the IAB's role here has evolved as the RFC Editor model has evolved, but the appointment function goes back to at least RFC 1358 (see section 8) in 1992. That was adjusted slightly in RFC 1601 when NomCom appointments were introduced (the RFC Editor text is in Section 2, subsection d) in 1994. It was also described in RFC 2850, (again in Section 2 d) in 2000. All of the updates which relate to looking at the series as a set of streams are in the RFC model documents (RFC 5620 and RFC 6635) whose initial publication was in 2009 and update in 2012.
>>
>
> Just because the IAB said it was so, doesn’t mean it was true.
>
> Jon was the RFC editor during the production of RFC 1358 and RFC 1601, and he was also on the IAB as a member, then as IRTF chair, then as RFC Editor Liaison, basically from 1990-1998. It's hard to credit that he did not read and comment on those documents in one of those two roles.
> The documents through RFC 2850 all predate the split into streams, so even RFC 2850 has to be read as the RFC Series having this text, rather than it being an assertion of the IAB alone within its own stream. I will leave it to Brian, who authored RFC 2850, to discuss the extent to which it was a community document, but I do note it is a BCP.
It was posted as draft-iab-rfc1601bis in 1999 and it was the 02
version that became the BCP after several months for community comment.
And there was comment. The tracker record is a bit sparse, since there
was no tracker then:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc1601bis/history/
The BCP text about the RFC Editor says only this:
The RFC Editor executes editorial management and publication of the
IETF "Request for Comment" (RFC) document series, which is the
permanent document repository of the IETF. The RFC series
constitutes the archival publication channel for Internet Standards
and for other contributions by the Internet research and engineering
community. RFCs are available free of charge to anyone via the
Internet. The IAB must approve the appointment of an organization to
act as RFC Editor and the general policy followed by the RFC Editor.
This of course was after Jon died; however the IAB internal discussion of
the charter started in 1997. (We didn't treat it as a high priority
work item.) I personally wrote the first version of what became the
above paragraph in a message to the IAB on November 1, 1997, so Jon
certainly saw it. However, I have no record of him commenting on it.
In fact, starting more or less that same week, most of his (and my)
concern was about the future of IANA.
OK, if people are curious, here is the text suggested on that day. Remember
that ICANN had not been invented yet:
" (d) RFC Series and IANA
|| The RFC Editor executes editorial management and publication
|| of the IETF permanent document series (Requests for Comments).
|| The RFC series constitutes the archival publication channel for
|| Internet Standards and for other contributions by the Internet
|| research and engineering community. RFCs are available free
|| of charge to anyone via the Internet.
|| The Internet Assigned Numbers Administration (IANA) administers
|| various numbering and naming spaces used in the Internet,
|| delegating this administration as appropriate.
|| The RFC Editor and the IANA operate with the advice and consent
|| of the IAB."
Brian
