Let’s get the AMAs kicked off on Lemmy, shall we.
Almost ten years ago now, I wrote RFC 7168, “Hypertext Coffeepot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances” which extends HTCPCP to handle tea brewing. Both Coffeepot Control Protocol and the tea-brewing extension are joke Internet Standards, and were released on Apr 1st (1998 and 2014). You may be familiar with HTTP error 418, “I’m a teapot”; this comes from the 1998 standard.
I’m giving a talk on the history of HTTP and HTCPCP at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin later this month, and I need an FAQ section; AMA about the Internet and HTTP. Let’s try this out!
Thank you for contributing to the magic if the old school internet.
My question: How does one get to write an RFC? Do you have to become part of a certain group, or just be known in certain circles, or do you just start writing and then submit it somewhere? If I had a great idea that I think should become an RFC, what is the process to make this a reality?
For Apr 1st RFCs in particular, the process is that you write your document in conformance to the RFC Editor’s Style Guide and email it to the editor directly. If you have a not-a-joke standard that you’d like to be considered, that’ll go through as an Internet Draft first, and then there are stages of review.
I haven’t been through the latter, but the editors are very approachable over email; I had no issues submitting my RFC for review and revision.