RFC 3

Documentation Conventions 🎀

RFC 3 ✨ (the original header also shows the number 4689)

• Title: Documentation Conventions
• Author: Steve Crocker, UCLA
• Date: April 1969
• Category/status: not listed in the original
• Obsoletes/updates: nothing listed in the original

okay bestie, so this is the very first RFC 💖 It's from the Network Working Group (NWG), and it explains how to write the notes themselves. Tbh the whole series started right here 🌸

The NWG is literally a group of people who were hyped about the HOST software, how to use the network, and early experiments with it. The group seems to be Steve Carr of Utah, Jeff Rulifson and Bill Duvall at SRI, and Steve Crocker and Gerard Deloche at UCLA. Membership is not closed, so anyone can join the squad 🫶

The NWG's work gets documented through notes like this one. Any site can make a note, and anybody can write one and add it to the series 🦋

CONTENT ✨

Okay so the content of an NWG note can be literally any thought, suggestion, etc. about the HOST software or any other part of the network 🧚 Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished, which is so relatable 😭 Philosophical positions with no examples are fine. So are specific suggestions or implementation techniques with no intro or background. Explicit questions with no attempted answers are also acceptable 💅 The minimum length for an NWG note is one sentence. That's it, that's the rule 💀

They're stating these standards (or lack of them) explicitly for two reasons 🌈 First, people tend to treat anything written down as automatically authoritative, and the group wants to encourage talking through ideas that are way less than authoritative. Second, there's a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and they want to ease that inhibition. Main character energy for everyone 👑

FORM 🎀

Every NWG note should have this information:

1. "Network Working Group" and "Request for Comments:" x, where x is a serial number. Serial numbers are assigned by Bill Duvall at SRI 🍓
2. Author and affiliation 💜
3. Date 🌸
4. Title. The title doesn't need to be unique, which is lowkey iconic 🦋

DISTRIBUTION 💌

One copy only will be sent from the author's site to:

1. Bob Kahn, BB&N
2. Larry Roberts, ARPA
3. Steve Carr, UCLA
4. Jeff Rulifson, UTAH
5. Ron Stoughton, UCSB
6. Steve Crocker, UCLA

Reproduction, if desired, may be handled locally 📬

OTHER NOTES 🧚

Two notes (1 & 2) have been written so far. Both are titled HOST Software, and they're by Steve Crocker and Bill Duvall, separately. Two versions of the same tea, honestly 🫖

Other notes planned are on:

1. Network Timetable ⏰
2. The Philosophy of NIL 🌙
3. Specifications for NIL 📝
4. Deeper Documentation of HOST Software 🔥