Subject: [Techspec] Proposed additional requirement: change history and provenance for RFCs

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 07:58:53 -0700

Greetings again. One thing that many people in the IETF have needed, 
and have often only found through heavy research, is important 
metadata for RFCs. Two important types of metadata come to mind:

- The change history for an RFC that updates or obsoletes an earlier 
RFC. Some RFCs are very good about listing this type of information, 
but many (particularly those that update instead of obsolete) are 
not. This type of information needs to be available to implementers 
who are handed a pile of RFCs and told to implement the "current 
standard".

- The provenance information, namely what caused the document to be 
published as an RFC. For example, if you are looking at an 
informational RFC, it is nearly impossible to tell whether it was a 
self-submitted RFC or one that came from a WG action, unless you know 
exactly which different boilerplate text was used at which time 
relative to when the RFC was published. Similarly, knowing if an 
older standards-track RFC was an individual submission or a WG item 
can help an implementer look for mailing lists where the RFC was 
discussed.

I see that making these both public and easily findable as 
requirements for our documentation process. Do others agree?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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