    Network Working Group                                         C. Huitema
    Request for Comments: 1796                                         INRIA
    Category: Informational                                        J. Postel
                                                                         ISI
                                                                  S. Crocker
                                                                   CyberCash
                                                                  April 1995

                           Not All RFCs are Standards

    Status of this Memo

       This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
       does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
       this memo is unlimited.

    Abstract

       This document discusses the relationship of the Request for Comments
       (RFCs) notes to Internet Standards.

    Not All RFCs Are Standards

       The "Request for Comments" (RFC) document series is the official
       publication channel for Internet standards documents and other
       publications of the IESG, IAB, and Internet community.  From time to
       time, and about every six months in the last few years, someone
       questions the rationality of publishing both Internet standards and
       informational documents as RFCs.  The argument is generally that this
       introduces some confusion between "real standards" and "mere
       publications".

       It is a regrettably well spread misconception that publication as an
       RFC provides some level of recognition.  It does not, or at least not
       any more than the publication in a regular journal.  In fact, each
       RFC has a status, relative to its relation with the Internet
       standardization process: Informational, Experimental, or Standards
       Track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, Internet Standard), or
       Historic.  This status is reproduced on the first page of the RFC
       itself, and is also documented in the periodic "Internet Official
       Protocols Standards" RFC (STD 1).  But this status is sometimes
       omitted from quotes and references, which may feed the confusion.

       There are two important sources of information on the status of the
       Internet standards:  they are summarized periodically in an RFC
       entitled "Internet Official Protocol Standards" and they are
       documented in the "STD" subseries.  When a specification has been

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    RFC 1796               Not All RFCs are Standards             April 1995

       adopted as an Internet Standard, it is given the additional label
       "STD xxxx", but it keeps its RFC number and its place in the RFC
       series.

       It is important to note that the relationship of STD numbers to RFC
       numbers is not one to one.  STD numbers identify protocols, RFC
       numbers identify documents.  Sometimes more than one document is used
       to specify a Standard protocol.

       In order to further increase the publicity of the standardization
       status, the IAB proposes the following actions:

          Use the STD number, rather than just the RFC numbers, in the cross
          references between standard tracks documents,

          Utilize the "web" hypertext technology to publicize the state of
          the standardization process.

       More precisely, we propose to add to the current RFC repository an
       "html" version of the "STD-1" document, i.e., the list of Internet
       standards.  We are considering the extension of this document to also
       describes actions in progress, i.e., standards track work at the
       "proposed" or "draft" stage.

    A Single Archive

       The IAB believes that the community benefitted significantly from
       having a single archival document series.  Documents are easy to find
       and to retrieve, and file servers are easy to organize.  This has
       been very important over the long term.  Experience of the past shows
       that subseries, or series of limited scope, tend to vanish from the
       network.  And, there is no evidence that alternate document schemes
       would result in less confusion.

       Moreover, we believe that the presence of additional documents does
       not actually hurt the standardization process.  The solution which we
       propose is to better publicize the "standard" status of certain
       documents, which is made relatively easy by the advent of networked
       hypertext technologies.

    Rather Document Than Ignore

       The RFC series includes some documents which are informational by
       nature and other documents which describe experiences.  A problem of
       perception occurs when such a document "looks like" an official
       protocol specification.  Misguided vendors may claim conformance to
       it, and misguided clients may actually believe that they are buying
       an Internet standard.

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    RFC 1796               Not All RFCs are Standards             April 1995

       The IAB believes that the proper help to misguided vendors and
       clients is to provide them guidance.  There is actually very little
       evidence of vendors purposely attempting to present informational or
       experimental RFCs as "Internet standards".  If such attempts
       occurred, proper response would indeed be required.

       The IAB believes that the community is best served by openly
       developed specifications.  The Internet standardization process
       provides guarantees of openness and thorough review, and the normal
       way to develop the specification of an Internet protocol is indeed
       through the IETF.

       The community is also well served by having access to specifications
       of which have been developed outside the IETF standards process,
       either because the protocols are experimental in nature, were
       developed privately, or failed to achieve the acquire the degree of
       consensus required for elevation to the standards track.

       The IAB believes that publication is better than ignorance.  If a
       particular specification ends up being used in products that are
       deployed over the Internet, we are better off if the specification is
       easy to retrieve as an RFC than if it is hidden in some private
       repository.

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    RFC 1796               Not All RFCs are Standards             April 1995

    Security Considerations

       Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

    Authors' Addresses

       Christian Huitema
       INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis
       2004 Route des Lucioles
       BP 109
       F-06561 Valbonne Cedex
       France

       Phone: +33 93 65 77 15
       EMail: Christian.Huitema@MIRSA.INRIA.FR

       Jon Postel
       USC/Information Sciences Institute
       4676 Admiralty Way
       Marina del Rey, CA 90292

       Phone: 1-310-822-1511
       EMail: Postel@ISI.EDU

       Steve Crocker
       CyberCash, Inc.
       2086 Hunters Crest Way
       Vienna, VA 22181

       Phone: 1- 703-620-1222
       EMail: crocker@cybercash.com

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