RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
October 24, 2018 RSOC Meeting

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

ATTENDEES
---------------------------------
 Sarah Banks (Chair) 
 Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting)
 Tony Hansen 
 Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting)
 Adam Roach
 Peter Saint-Andre
 Robert Sparks (Lead) 
 Portia Wenze-Danley (IETF LLC Board Liaison, non-voting)

REGRETS
---------------------------------
 Christian Huitema

MINUTES
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0. Review of minutes

  The minutes of the 27 September 2018 meeting were approved.

1. Format work update

  Heather Flanagan reported that discussion about the v3 specification 
  and associated tools is happening on the xml2rfc-dev list. Henrik 
  Levkowetz is working on the HTML formatter, with the goal of getting  
  that out before IETF 103. The rfclint, xmldiff, and svgcheck tools 
  have been completed. Heather Flanagan will send Robert Sparks an email 
  about documenting those tools for regular users.

  The current timeline is available at 
  <https://trac.tools.ietf.org/tools/ietfdb/wiki/>.

2. Project review and prioritization

  Heather Flanagan reviewed the RFC Editor's core goals:

  - Prepare RFCs for publication within the time frame defined in the 
    Work Standards.  This includes editing, formatting, and interacting 
    with the authors and stream managers as needed.   
  - Report on production times and queue throughput (reports submitted 
    monthly and quarterly). 
  - Report on errata and use of the system. 
  - Report the detailed status of documents in AUTH48. 
  - Respond to legal requests to authenticate RFCs. 
  - Liaise with the community, the IESG, Tools Development, and the EDU 
    team. 
  - Provide tutorials as needed. 
  - Review and update processes as needed. 
  - Assist the RSE as needed.  

  The RFC Editor's specific goals for 2018 include:

  - Support changes to the RFC format by   
    o Continue to test the new tools as they become available and offer 
      input into the prioritization of any resulting issues.
    o Work with the appropriate group to review non-ASCII characters for 
      accuracy and suitability. 
    o Help make the rollout of the new format a success in 2018.
  - Document RPC and author requirements for an updated AUTH48 tool 
    chain.

  The RSOC discussed the RFC Editor's goals for 2019. Assuming a flat 
  funding model, the goals would include: 

  - Core Goals
    o Summary: edit and publish RFCs, but need to discuss SLA 
      expectations, XML refinements during the editing process
  - Format
    o transitioning new format into production
    o determining appropriate SLA in new format
    o documenting and publishing a high-level RPC procedures manual for 
      v3
      - note that documenting the tools is the responsibility of the 
        developers
    o Style Guide update
  - Outreach
    o Streams and statuses
  - Errata
    o Any changes required for v3

  Heather Flanagan asked how much XML editing the RPC should be expected 
  to do with XML becoming the new canonical format. She cited an example 
  where an author's XML is technically correct but semantically wrong, 
  e.g. putting a table in as artwork. The RSOC agreed that the RPC 
  should push back on authors in such cases, and move the document to 
  the "AUTH" state. Sarah Banks added that the RPC should provide 
  examples of what the authors should be doing when they push back.

  Tony Hansen asked what kind of changes need to be made to the errata 
  system. Heather Flanagan replied that they are looking at ways to be 
  able to point to particular sections of XML and indicating what format 
  one was looking at when they discovered the erratum. Adam Roach noted 
  that the IESG is also discussing ways to automate errata, so these 
  discussions will probably dovetail at some point. 

  Heather Flanagan said that if there was an increase in funding for the 
  RFC Editor, they would also look at:

  - Improvements to the publication process
    o Infrastructure project and documentation management system
  - Errata sandbox
  - Reference system
  - RFC Editor effort associated with “Security review of RFC Editor 
    tools prior to open source"
    o If this gets funding, this would require significant resources on 
      the part of the RPC

  Robert Sparks disagreed that the security review would require 
  additional RPC resources; he expects that the Tools Team would only 
  need to come to the RPC if they had questions about a piece of code 
  where it was not obvious what the code was meant to do.

  Adam Roach asked where the discussion about clarifying the status of 
  RFC statuses and streams falls. Heather Flanagan replied that it 
  would be part of the outreach item. Robert Sparks suggested that this 
  should be made its own bullet point on the list.

3. Conversation with Tenet

  Heather Flanagan reported that Greg Wood and Dan York put her in touch 
  with a group called Tenet to help figure out how to tackle the problem 
  space for the conversation about RFC streams and statuses. She expects 
  to have a proposal from them before IETF 103.

4. IETF 103

  At IETF 103, the RSOC will discuss:

  - 2019+ prioritization 
  - Format rollout
  - RPC SLA 
  - RFC Editor and the publishing industry