2020-07-20-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-10-sessa-2020-07-20-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
July 20, 2020 RSOC Meeting

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

ATTENDEES
---------------------------------
  Sarah Banks (RSOC Chair) 
  Jay Daley (IETF LLC Board Liaison, non-voting)
  Tony Hansen 
  John Levine, (Temporary RFC Series Project Manager, non-voting)
  Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting)
  Mark Nottingham 
  Adam Roach
  Peter Saint-Andre

GUEST
---------------------------------
  Sandy Ginoza (RFC Production Center)

REGRETS
---------------------------------
  Cullen Jennings (IAB Lead)

RSOC DECISIONS: 2020
---------------------------------
  - 2020-05-27: RSOC agrees that the RFC Series should plan to be able 
    to regenerate the output formats of RFCs. Related action item: John 
    Levine to draft a plan that defines when it is appropriate to 
    regenerate the output formats of RFCs.

  - 2019 Decisions: <https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2020/01/rsoc-decisions-2019.txt>

ACTION ITEM REVIEW
---------------------------------

  Done: 

  - 2020-06-22: John Levine to add the plan on how to manage change 
    control for the v3 XML to draft-iab-rfc7991bis and as a README file 
    for the GitHub repository for 
    https://github.com/rfc-format/draft-iab-xml2rfc-v3-bis.

  - 2020-06-22: Jay Daley to draft a process for managing changes to 
    the v3 RFC XML vocabulary.

  - 2020-05-27: Sarah Banks to talk to the RPC about running an 
    unofficial "shadow SLA" in order to assess what the actual SLA 
    should be under v3.

  In Progress:

  - 2020-06-22: RSOC to review the plan that defines when it is 
    appropriate to regenerate the output formats of RFCs and what 
    version control mechanisms should be used, and provide feedback on 
    the RSOC list.
    * Deadline: 2020-07-06.

  - 2020-06-22: John Levine to document the factors that appear to 
    contribute to the very low adoption by authors of v3 XML as a 
    submission format.
    * Deadline: July RSOC meeting, 2020-07-20.

  New:

  - 2020-07-20: John Levine to write up a proposal for a version 
    control mechanism for RFC output formats have been regenerated.  
    * Deadline: 2020-07-27

  - 2020-07-20: Jay Daley to take the proposed version control 
    mechanism for RFC outputs that are regenerated to legal counsel and 
    ask if it will be sufficient for responding to subpoenas.
    Deadline: 2020-08-10

  - 2020-07-20: Sarah Banks, Jay Daley, Sandy Ginoza, and John Levine 
    to act as a design team and propose a new SLA for the RSOC to 
    review. 
    * Deadline: 2020-08-10.


MINUTES
---------------------------------

1. Administrivia

  The minutes of the 2020-06-22 RSOC meeting were approved.


2. v3 Issues and Tools

  The RSOC discussed when it is appropriate to regenerate the output 
  formats of RFCs and what version control mechanisms should be used.

  John Levine said that he thinks existing RFCs will only need to be 
  regenerated once, after the v3 grammar is declared final.

  Sarah Banks said that the RSOC had previously agreed that there should 
  be the ability to regenerate the output formats of RFCs, but that they 
  were still looking for what criteria would be used to determine when 
  that should happen, and also what version control mechanisms would be 
  used for RFCs that are re-rendered. 

  John Levine said that he did not think it would be necessary to 
  regenerate the output formats after the v3 grammar is finalized, since 
  the output formats are not canonical; any re-rendering would be 
  cosmetic.

  Jay Daley noted that there may be undiscovered bugs that would merit 
  re-rendering; for example, if a bug in an output format caused data in 
  a table to be munged, re-rendering the output formats to correct that 
  bug might result in different text than when the documents were 
  originally rendered from the canonical XML, even if the XML had not 
  changed. He also noted that regenerating the output formats might 
  result in page breaks being different, which might be an issue for 
  legal subpoenas.

  Jay Daley asked how the RFC Series would version control the output 
  formats in the cases when the outputs needed to be re-rendered.

  Sandy Ginoza noted that some documents have already been re-rendered 
  once; in that case, the original files were saved in a different 
  directory, and the RPC has a note that that the files were re-rendered 
  on a certain date. The regenerated files were given the same file 
  names as the original files so that they could remain easily found.

  Sarah Banks asked how the consumer would know that the document they 
  were reading had been regenerated at some point.

  John Levine said that in the HTML and PDF-A outputs, there is a line 
  in the the code that notes which version of the tools were used to 
  render the document, but there is no such metadata for the TXT 
  outputs.

  Jay Daley suggested adding the rendering date to the filename.

  Adam Roach noted that since the output formats are no longer 
  canonical, they could add a header or footer to the text files that 
  includes the rendering date; this would avoid changing the file name 
  for people who expect RFC filenames to follow a certain pattern.

  Sarah Banks asked if pointing to the metadata for the HTML and PDF 
  outputs would be sufficient when responding to a subpoena. John Levine 
  replied that according to previous conversations with legal counsel, 
  as long as the text doesn't change, it doesn't matter if the output is 
  re-rendered.

  Sandy Ginoza added that if the RPC receives a subpoena for a document 
  that was re-rendered, the RPC will need to run a diff on both files, 
  and let the requestor know which document was available on what dates.
  
  John Levine suggested that the RPC give all versions of an RFC in 
  response to a subpoena.

  Sarah Banks asked John Levine to write up the current proposal for 
  what version control mechanisms should be used for output formats that 
  are re-rendered (e.g. including the date rendered in the metadata for 
  PDF-A and HTML files, adding a footer with the date rendered for text 
  files). Jay Daley will take that proposal to legal counsel and ask if 
  it will be sufficient for responding to subpoenas.

  * Action item: John Levine to write up a proposal for a version 
    control mechanism for RFC output formats have been regenerated. 
    Deadline: 2020-07-27

  * Action item: Jay Daley to take the proposed version control 
    mechanism for RFC outputs that are regenerated to legal counsel and 
    ask if it will be sufficient for responding to subpoenas.
    Deadline: 2020-08-10
  
  John Levine noted that he has reached out to authors to ask about the 
  factors that are contributing to the low adoption of v3 XML as a 
  submission format, but has not heard back yet. Sarah Banks suggested 
  that if he did not get a response by the next RSOC meeting that this 
  action item be dropped.

  Jay Daley noted that the IETF LLC has an RFP out for a review of 
  current landscape of IETF document processing tools; the results of 
  this project will likely be useful information for RSOC.

3. SLA

  The RSOC discussed whether to run an unofficial "shadow SLA" in order 
  to assess what the RPC's actual SLA should be under v3. 

  * Action item: Sarah Banks, Jay Daley, Sandy Ginoza, and John Levine 
    to act as a design team and propose a new SLA for the RSOC to 
    review. 
    Deadline: 2020-08-10.

4. Other Business

  There was no other business.