RFC 5540

40 Years of RFCs

📅 published April 2009, from ietf

RFC 5540: 40 Years of RFCs 🎀

okay bestie, so this one is by the RFC Editor (the people who run the RFC series), written from USC/ISI and dated 7 April 2009 📅. It's Informational 🧚, which means it gives info to the Internet community and doesn't set any standard. The header doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so no drama there 💅.

Status of This Memo ✨

This memo gives info to the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🌸.

Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info). Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document 📜.

Abstract 🦋

This RFC celebrates the 40th birthday of the RFC document series 🎂🥳.

1. RFCs and Jon Postel 💖

Okay so forty years ago today, RFC 1 got published at UCLA [RFC1] 😭. Since then the series has grown to more than 5400 documents (roughly 160,000 pages) about computer networking in general and Internet protocols in particular 📚🔥. It came out of the US government-funded research that built the ARPANET and then the Internet 🌈. When the IETF showed up in the mid-1980s, RFCs became the main way IETF standards got published, so the vendor and user communities became the center of it all 💅.

For the first 29 years, Jon Postel [Postel] was the RFC Editor, until his untimely death in October 1998 🕊️🫶. Postel, with a lot of help from Joyce K. Reynolds, handled the collecting, editing, online publishing, and archiving of RFCs 🗂️. From 1978 until 1998 he was a research scientist at the USC Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI) in Marina del Rey, California 🌴. He was also the original IANA, plus Director of the Computer Networks Division at ISI, iconic behavior honestly 👑.

For the 30th anniversary of RFC 1, and as a tribute to Jon Postel's huge contribution, the RFC Editor published RFC 2555 [RFC2555] on April 7, 1999 🎀. It had memories from three networking legends: Steve Crocker, who wrote RFC 1; Vint Cerf, whose long-range vision still guides us ✨; and Jake Feinler, who played a key role in the middle years of the RFC series 🧚.

Ten more years have passed, and now we've hit the 40th anniversary of the RFC series 🥹. The series has more than doubled in size over the last ten years, and it's expected to keep going far into the future 🚀. Everything good said in RFC 2555 still holds up ten years later, slay 💅💖.

We should still point out some changes from the past ten years though 👀:

  • After Jon passed away, Joyce Reynolds and Bob Braden put together a small organization at USC/ISI to keep the RFC Editor function going 🫶. They were motivated by wanting to honor Postel by continuing his remarkable effort, and by wanting to provide a service to the Internet community 💜.
  • Funding for the RFC Editor, which had been supported by the US government until 1998, was taken over by the Internet Society 💸. During 1998-2006, ISOC funded the RFC Editor through a series of annual contracts and extensions 📝. ISOC put the function out for competitive bid for 2007 (USC/ISI was selected to provide RFC Editor services from 2007-2009), and the contract will go out to bid again for post-2009 🙈. During 2009 there will be a big transition for the RFC Editor function, as some new organization or set of organizations takes over a service that USC/ISI has been doing continuously since 1978 😭🌸.
  • Lots of improvements have made the RFC editorial process more efficient and transparent [RFCed09] ✨🔥.
  • The RFC Editor formed an RFC Editorial Board, a group of people with broad and deep knowledge of the Internet and networking 🧠. One of its major jobs is helping the RFC Editor by reviewing RFCs in the Independent Submission stream 💅.
  • An email list, rfc-interest@rfc-editor.org, was created so the community can give input on RFC Editor functions 📬🦋.

2. Security Considerations 🔐

This document does not raise any security issues 🫶.

3. Acknowledgments 🎀

It has been an honor for USC/ISI to serve the community for the past 31 years 🥹💖.

4. Informative References 📚

Author's Address 🧚

RFC Editor

EMail: rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org 💌

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