Re: List postings as attachments

[Craig Dickson <crdic@pacbell.net>]

Hall Stevenson wrote:

> From this page, http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcfaq.html:
> 
> ========================
> Are all RFCs Internet standards documents?
> 
> In a word, "NO!".
> Many RFCs have Informational or Experimental status and do not
> represent any kind of standard. They contain information that
> may be useful or important to retain in this archival document
> series.
> 
> This is important to understand, because unscrupulous
> marketeers and a careless trade press sometimes falsely
> suggest that every RFC represents a standard, or that all
> standards have equal weight. The relationship among Internet
> technical specifications is often complex.
> ========================
> 
> This sentence
> 
> "This is important to understand, because unscrupulous
> marketeers and a careless trade press sometimes falsely
> suggest that every RFC represents a standard..."
> 
> jumped out at me. :-)
> 
> At what point does an "RFC" become a published standard ?? I
> see a few standards that reference RFC2015 but didn't read
> completely through them.

You have to look at the status of the RFC document. At the top of the
document, on the left side, there is usually a "Category:" label
followed by "Standards Track" or some other descriptive phrase. Also,
the first paragraph of an RFC usually is under the header "Status of
this memo" and tells you whether this is a proposed standard, a research
memo, or whatever.

Craig