GENWiki

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) P. Hoffman, Ed. Request for Comments: 6722 VPN Consortium Obsoletes: 4677 August 2012 Category: Informational ISSN: 2070-1721

           Publishing the "Tao of the IETF" as a Web Page

Abstract

 This document describes how the "Tao of the IETF", which has been
 published as a series of RFCs in the past, is instead being published
 as a web page.  It also contains the procedure for publishing and
 editing that web page.

Status of This Memo

 This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
 published for informational purposes.

 This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
 (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
 received public review and has been approved for publication by the
 Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
 approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
 Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6722.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.

 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents
 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
 described in the Simplified BSD License.

Hoffman Informational [Page 1]  RFC 6722 Tao as Web August 2012

1. Introduction

 The "Tao of the IETF" ("Tao") describes the inner workings of IETF
 meetings and Working Groups, discusses organizations related to the
 IETF, and introduces the standards process.  It is not a formal IETF
 process document but instead an informational overview.  The Tao has
 traditionally been published as an RFC.  It has been published as
 RFCs 1391, 1539, 1718, and 3160; it is currently [RFC4677].

 At the time this document is published, there is a strong desire in
 the IETF community to turn the Tao into a web page that can be
 updated more easily.  This document describes that process.  At the
 same time, this document formally obsoletes the last version of the
 Tao that was published as an RFC because the last version, RFC 4677,
 is no longer considered the "latest" version of the Tao: the new web
 page is.

 This document contains the procedure agreed to by the IESG.  The Tao
 has traditionally been an IETF consensus document, which means that
 the IESG has had the final say about what the Tao contained before it
 was sent to the RFC Editor.  Thus, the IESG should have final say
 regarding what the Tao says when it is a web page.

2. Procedure for Publishing and Editing the Tao

 The Tao is published at <http://www.ietf.org/tao.html> and
 <https://www.ietf.org/tao.html>.  The initial content for the Tao web
 page is based on a draft document that was meant to replace RFC 4677.

 The Tao is edited by one or more people as designated by the IESG.
 Suggestions for changes to the Tao are discussed on the
 tao-discuss@ietf.org mailing list.

 The editor of the Tao decides which proposed changes should be
 submitted to the IESG for approval.  The editor publishes the
 proposed changes in a version at
 <http://www.ietf.org/tao-possible-revision.html>.  The IESG may
 accept as many of the proposed changes as it wishes.  The IESG then
 submits the changed version to the IETF Secretariat for publication
 on the IETF web page at the URLs given above.  The Tao editor and the
 IESG should confirm that the page appears on the web site as
 intended.

 Each version of the Tao has a visible timestamp near the beginning of
 the document.  All published versions are archived using URLs of the
 form <http://www.ietf.org/tao-archive/tao-YYYYMMDD.html>, and a list
 of the revisions is available at <http://www.ietf.org/tao-archive/>.

Hoffman Informational [Page 2]  RFC 6722 Tao as Web August 2012

 From time to time, versions of the Tao are translated into other
 languages.  These translations do not represent IETF consensus and
 may be provided on an "as is" basis.  The issues of how translations
 are recorded, made available, cross-referenced to versions of the
 Tao, and archived are outside the scope of this document and are for
 future study.

3. Proposals for How the Tao Web Page Should Be Developed

 During the discussion that led to this document, there were many
 proposals for how the Tao, as a web page, should be published and
 edited.  Some wanted just a web page; some wanted a web page and
 periodic snapshots as RFCs.  Some wanted a wiki that could be easily
 edited by anyone in the IETF community, with a master editor who
 would revert bad edits; some wanted a wiki with a more limited group
 of contributors.  The procedure in Section 2 above was the rough
 consensus of the discussion.

5. Security Considerations

 The Tao is available over Transport Layer Security (TLS) at
 <https://www.ietf.org/tao.html>.

6. Informative References

 [RFC4677]  Hoffman, P. and S. Harris, "The Tao of IETF - A Novice's
            Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force", BCP 17,
            RFC 4677, September 2006.

Author's Address

 Paul Hoffman (editor)
 VPN Consortium

 EMail: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org

Hoffman Informational [Page 3]