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: 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.