2020-12-14-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-10-sessa-2020-12-14-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
December 14, 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)
Mark Nottingham 
Adam Roach
Peter Saint-Andre

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


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: 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.

  - 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.

  In Progress:

  - 2020-11-16: Jay Daley to digest the data from the submission 
    formats survey and summarize it for the RSOC.
    * Deadline: 2020-12-23

  - 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: 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 that the RPC would add before 
    publication of an RFC if they were not included by the authors.
    * Deadline: February 2021


  New: 

  - 2020-12-14: John Levine to send a message to the community asking 
    for input on how to handle version control for RFC output formats 
    that have been regenerated.
    * Deadline: 2020-12-21

  - 2020-12-14: Sarah Banks to forward Heather Flanagan's previous RPC 
    review to the RSOC.
    * Deadline: 2020-12-21

  - 2020-12-14: Cindy Morgan to propose a timeline and process to 
    select the RSOC Chair for 2021.
    * Deadline: 2020-12-18

1. Administrivia

  The minutes of the 2020-11-16 RSOC meeting were approved with one 
  correction from Peter Saint-Andre.


2. v3 Issues and Tools

  John Levine reported that he has not received any additional feedback 
  from ROSC on the draft text of his message to the community asking 
  for input on how to handle version control for RFC output formats that 
  have been regenerated.

  * Action item: John Levine to send a message to the community asking 
    for input on how to handle version control for RFC output formats 
    that have been regenerated.

  Jay Daley reported that he and John Levine have reviewed the data from 
  the submissions formats survey. Jay will write up a summary of the 
  results and send it to RSOC by 2020-12-23.

  Once the summary of the survey results is sent to RSOC, 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 the survey has been educational; one thing they 
  can do is to try to encourage people to send their XML (if they have 
  it). Jay Daley suggested that they might amend the I-D submission page 
  in the Datatracker to try to nudge people towards submitting XML.

  Jay Daley said that at some point, RSOC should talk about deprecating 
  XMLv2 and PostScript as submission formats.


3. RFC XML and Style Guide change management team

  John Levine reported that the RFC XML and Style Guide change 
  management team has met and scheduled several additional calls for 
  January and February to discuss the proposal for a minimum profile of 
  v3 XML tags that the RPC would add before publication of an RFC if 
  they were not included by the authors.

  Once the team has a proposal for the minimum profile of v3 XML tags 
  to be added by the RPC if they were not included by the authors, that 
  proposal will be shared with the rfc-interest list.

  Cullen Jennings noted that if the proposal is for the RPC to add some 
  tags that are not already specified in the RFCs, the RSOC must be very 
  transparent about that.

  Sarah Banks said that the proposal would be shared with the community 
  via the rfc-interest list, and RSOC will decide whether the RFCs need 
  to be updated based on the community feedback on the proposal. 


4. SLA Update 

  John Levine noted that one of RSOC's annual tasks is to review the 
  RPC's SLA, but the SLA was suspended for the first three quarters of 
  the year. In October, RSOC agreed 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 went back into effect for Q4 2020, with the understanding that 
  the imminent release of Cluster 238 would likely affect processing 
  times.

  Sarah Banks added that the SLA should be reviewed again in 6-8 months.


5. AUTH48 Process

  The RSOC discussed what exactly authors should be asked to review and 
  sign off on during the AUTH48 process. Sandy Ginoza suggested several 
  options:

    (a) Authors should be asked to review all output formats of RFCs.
    (b) The RPC should tell authors which output version to review.
    (c) The RPC should ask authors which version(s) they reviewed so 
        they have that information if questions arise later.

  Cullen Jennings said that, given that the XML is the canonical format, 
  authors should sign off on the XML. Mark Nottingham and Peter Saint-
  Andre agreed.

  Sarah Banks countered that reviewing the XML will be difficult for 
  authors who do not know XML, and asked why authors couldn't review 
  their document in the format they submitted it in.

  Jay Daley said that for documents that are submitted in formats other 
  than XML, the RPC will do work in XML that won't be supported by the 
  original tools used to create the document. Either authors will need 
  to review all of the XML tagging, or the concept of "canonical XML" 
  will need to change to be that the content is canonical but the tags 
  are not.

  The RSOC agreed to keep thinking about this and put it back on the 
  agenda in January for further discussion.


6. Sending New RFCs to Electronic Archives 

  John Levine reported that the documentation for how new RFCs are added 
  to the digital archives at the Computer History Museum and the 
  National Library of Sweden is sparse. John has reached out to former 
  RFC Series Editor Heather Flanagan, as well as contacts at the 
  Computer History Museum and the National Library of Sweden. Once he 
  has more information, John plans to write a short RFC to document the 
  process.


7. RPC Review 

  John Levine reported that he will start work on the RPC review in 
  January, using data from the monthly author surveys and discussions 
  with the RPC.

  Cullen Jennings asked if it would be possible to get an idea about 
  what the cost per page was for an RFC both before and after the switch 
  to XMLv3; that information would be helpful to have when discussing 
  the SLA. Sarah Banks replied that trying to associate a dollar amount 
  per page has been controversial in the past.

  Jay Daley asked if there was a copy of a past review that the RSOC 
  could look at. Sandy Ginoza said that she did not see a problem with 
  that.

  * Action item: Sarah Banks to forward Heather Flanagan's previous RPC 
    review to the RSOC.

  Sarah Banks noted that one thing that Heather Flanagan did in previous 
  reviews was look at the feedback and try to discern if any of the 
  comments were worth prioritizing in the coming year. John Levine 
  replied that he will be meeting with the stream managers in January to 
  try to get some of that feedback. Sarah Banks asked that the RSOC 
  chair be looped in to that process.


8. Next RSOC Meeting

  The RSOC agreed to change the time of future calls to be one hour 
  later. The next RSOC meeting will be on 2021-01-18 at 16:00 PST.


9. RSOC Chair

  The RSOC discussed the selection of the RSOC Chair for 2021. Cindy 
  Morgan will propose a process for RSOC chair selection on the RSOC 
  list.

  * Action item: Cindy Morgan to propose a timeline and process to 
    select the RSOC Chair for 2021.