The Place Of Rfcs In Historical Perspective

What is an RFC?

The collaboration which formed the medium we enjoy today was organized and generated by a method of collaboration called RequestForComments, or RFC.

An RFC is a document describing the standards that make the Internet work. It begins as an Internet Draft. The Draft is proposed to the IETF, whereupon voting and modification occurs until it either becomes obsolete due to lack of interest or is accepted by the IESG, whereupon it is assigned an RFC number and published as an RFC. The process of producing an RFC is described in RFC 2026. The documents are produced by the IETF and can be found at http://www.rfc-editor.org, the home of the RFC Editor. While the RFC Editor is not a single individual, but rather a group which is supported by the Internet Society.

Collaboration

The importance of collaboration and establishment of Standards and Protocols as well as the hardware and wiring to support it were essential to the forming of Arpanet and the Internet as we know it today.

What of RFC's History?

One can observe and appreciate the effort involved in the cooperation of individuals and institutions in the process. The history of the last 30 years of RFC progress can be found at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2555.txt

What are RFC's used for

Rfcs on Protocols:

Current Web Services Activity:

Details of Current and Past Activity: http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/

  Collaborations are underway on many areas by the following WorkingGroups?:
  Web Services Architecture Working Group
    http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/
  Web Services Description Working Group
    http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/
  Web Services Choreography Working Group
    http://www.w3.org/2003/01/wscwg-charter
  XML Protocol Working Group
    http://www.w3.org/XML/
     XML Coordination Group 
       Its role is to provide a forum for coordination between the Working Groups of the XML Activity, W3C and other organizations.
     XML Core Working Group
      Mission: to develop and maintain the specifications for XML closely related specifications such as Namespaces,
       the XML Information Set, and XInclude.
     XSL Working Group
       Responsible for the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), XSL Transformations (XSLT), 
       and XSL Formatting Objects (XSL/FO). 
     XML Linking Working Group
       The group is not currently active. It was working on hypertext links for XML. 
       This includes the XML Linking Language (XLink) and the XML Pointer Language (XPointer).
     XML Query Working Group
       The XML Query Language, to provide flexible query facilities for extraction of data 
       from real and virtual XML documents. This includes publication of XQuery and also XPath.
     XML Schema Working Group
       Provide mechanisms to define and describe the structure, content, and semantics of XML documents.

I was pretty sure somebody else would mention this, but...

RFC is a misnomer. It is supposed to be a request for comment, not a statement of didactic policy on the part of some industry board. This has become something of a problem over the years, particularly since ICANN et al started kicking out the common users from the steering and editing committees.

Thank goodness a certain software publishing house in Redmond doesn't have all the seats on those boards. But since there is no longer anyone to represent the average Joe Internet, I suppose we can see some big changes coming eventually. <sigh>