2020-11-16-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-10-sessa-2020-11-16-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
November 16, 2020 RSOC Meeting

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

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

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

REGRETS
---------------------------------
 Mark Nottingham 
 Adam Roach


RSOC DECISIONS: 2020
---------------------------------
  - 2020-10-19: RSOC agrees to reimplement the RPC's previous SLA, 
    understanding that the amount of work involved per page has 
    increased by roughly 50% from what it was before the XML transition, 
    and so the RPC will need to keep additional staff to meet the SLA. 
    The SLA will go back into effect for Q4 2020, with the understanding 
    that the imminent release of Cluster 238 will likely affect 
    processing times.

  - 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:

  - 2020-10-19: Jay Daley to send out the survey about submission 
    formats.

  - 2020-09-21: John Levine to resolve the open issues on the "RFC v3 
    Issues" document.

  - 2020-09-21: Sarah Banks to update the IAB on the current plan to 
    reinstate the SLA.

  In Progress:

  - 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.
    * New Deadline: 2021-01-07

  - 2020-09-21: John Levine to draft a message to the community asking 
    for input on how to handle version control for RFC output formats 
    that have been regenerated and send it to the RSOC for review.
    * Deadline: 2020-10-30.
    * Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11fQn_3P0ZXWnbcfy45yzcHwqH-tuSRoVdC8prrDYGnI/edit

  - 2020-09-21: Jay Daley, John Levine, Henrik Levkowetz, Peter Saint-
    Andre, and Robert Sparks to work with Sandy Ginoza to propose a 
    minimum profile of v3 XML tags to be added by the RPC.
    * Deadline: 2020-10-21

  Updated:

  - 2020-10-19: Sarah Banks to send a note drafted by Jay Daley to 
    the RFC XML and Style Guide change management team asking them to 
    work with the RPC to propose the minimum profile of v3 XML tags to 
    be added by the RPC.
    * Deadline: 2020-10-23

  New:

  - 2020-11-16: Jay Daley to digest the data from the submission 
    formats survey and summarize it for the RSOC.
    * Deadline: 2021-01-07


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

1. Administrivia

  The minutes of the 2020-10-19 RSOC meeting were approved.


2. v3 Issues and Tools

  Jay Daley reported that he sent out the survey about submission 
  formats. The next step will be to digest the results and see what can 
  be learned from them. 

  * Action item: Jay Daley to review the data from the submission 
    formats survey and summarize it for the RSOC.

  Peter Saint-Andre said that he may have time to help review the survey 
  data; Jay Daley will ping him off-list about that.

  Once RSOC has the analysis of the submission formats survey results, 
  John Levine will document the factors that appear to contribute to the 
  very low adoption by authors of v3 XML as a submission format.

  John Levine noted that he has started asking about submission formats 
  in the monthly survey he sends to authors who have recently published 
  RFCs. The responses so far indicate that most people do not know what 
  version of XML they are using, which leads John to believe it is a 
  documentation and tool flow problem. 

  Jay Daley suggested recommending a change to the XML that would insert 
  something that says what tool produced it.

  John Levine reported that a blog post on the RFC v3 XML Issues 
  <https://www.ietf.org/blog/rfc-v3-xml-issues/>  was published on 
  2020-11-03. Jay Daley observed that there has been little to no 
  feedback.

  John Levine has drafted a message to the community asking for input on 
  how to handle version control for RFC output formats that have been 
  regenerated. Sarah Banks asked John to send the text to the RSOC for 
  review.

3. RFC XML and Style Guide change management team

  Jay Daley noted that the RSOC Chair still needs to send the email to 
  the RFC XML and Style Guide change management team asking them to work 
  with the RPC to propose the minimum profile of v3 XML tags to be added 
  by the RPC.

  Sarah Banks asked if the team has met in the past month. John Levine 
  replied that they have not. Peter Saint-Andre will send an email to 
  the team to kick things off.

  Jay Daley asked the RSOC if they had any objections to Henrik 
  Levkowetz continuing to be a part of the RFC XML and Style Guide 
  change management team on a volunteer basis once his current contract 
  ends at the end of the year. RSOC had no objections.


4. SLA

  Sarah Banks updated the IAB on the current plan to reinstate the SLA 
  in an email on 2020-10-28.

  Sandy Ginoza reported that she does not think the SLA will be met for 
  Q4 because there are still 80-something documents in AUTH48 with 
  extended processing times.

  Sarah Banks asked when Cluster 238 is expected to be published. Sandy 
  Ginoza replied that she hopes it will happen during Q4, but there are 
  still 14 documents waiting on author approvals, and she cannot say 
  when the final approvals will come. 


5. Page Numbers in RFCs 

  The RSOC discussed whether IETF tools can produce RFC output with page 
  numbers, and whether that decision is an RSOC decision or a Tools Team 
  decision. Cullen Jennings noted that the tools that produce RFCs are 
  all open source and if someone put in a pull request against one of 
  them, it would not be RSOC that decided whether to grant the pull 
  request. 

  Sarah Banks said that whether there are page numbers or not falls 
  under the purview of the RSE as part of the style guide. Cullen 
  Jennings replied that that is true for the official output formats, 
  but there is nothing to stop someone from generating their own 
  unofficial output.

  Jay Daley will follow up with Robert Sparks and let him know that RSOC 
  does not believe that the decision about whether to allow IETF tools 
  to produce RFC output with page numbers falls under RSOC's purview. 
  The official RFC outputs on rfc-editor.org will continue to not have 
  page numbers.


6. Requests to RSOC from IAB

  The RSOC discussed the request from the IAB to announce the creation 
  of the "RFC XML and Style Guide change management team" on the IETF 
  discussion list, given that it had already been announced on the RFC-
  interest list. The RSOC concluded that since the discussion is already 
  happening on the RFC-interest list, and creating such teams is within 
  RSOC's purview, there was no need to also announce it on the IETF 
  discussion list. Cullen Jennings will send an email to the IAB 
  explaining this decision.


7. Next RSOC Meeting

  The RSOC agreed to change the date of their next meeting to Monday, 
  2020-12-14. The meeting time will remain at 15:00 PST.


8. Other Business

  Sandy Ginoza reported that she had a discussion during the RPC's 
  office hours at IETF 109 about the AUTH48 process, and whether (a) 
  authors should be asked to review all output formats of RFCs, (b) the 
  RPC should tell authors which version to review, or (c) the RPC should 
  ask authors which version(s) they reviewed so they have that 
  information if questions arise later. 

  The RSOC agreed that this is a question worth thinking about. This 
  will come back to the RSOC for further discussion at their December 
  meeting.