Subject: ISI Relationship with RFC Editor Ends

From: IETF Administrative Director <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 04:06:54 -0700 (PDT)

ISI's relationship with the RFC Editor ended on Wednesday, June 30, 2010.
That relationship began on March 21, 1977 when Jon Postel joined the
University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute and
brought the RFC Editor responsibilities with him.

Today, there are more than 5,900 RFCs, of which, almost 5,000 have been
processed, edited, and published at ISI. This reflects a tremendous
commitment on the part of ISI.  Just as the Internet’s history is marked
by individuals stepping forward to take the lead, so too organizations
such as ISI have shown leadership and dedication beyond what anyone had
the right to expect.

The RFC series demands a commitment to quality and consistency; to
process and transparency. Open standards and open access to standards are
cornerstones of the Internet’s success. And so the importance of the RFC
Editor role cannot be overstated.

For more than 30 years, USC’s Information Sciences Institute provided the
bedrock of organizational support the global Internet community needed.

Throughout ISI’s stewardship, the RFC Editor continuously improved the
RFC editorial processes, provided education and support to the IETF
community, and ensured the RFC archive was fully, freely available to
people from all over the world.

It’s hard to imagine a more humble-looking document series than the RFCs,
with their monospaced ACII text, austere formatting, and hard coded
headers and footers. Nor could you call the RFCs famous. As Jon himself
once said, “being in the limelight has its minuses”.

Yet the impact of this series has been, and continues to be earth
shattering. 

The IETF, the IAB, the IRTF and the Independent Submissions' work is
documented in the RFCs. All of us are joined by a common belief that the
Internet can improve the quality of life for people everywhere. 
For us, the RFCs are our holy books. Our folk lore. Our history. And our
guides. Vint Cerf once called them – in an RFC of course – “the Great
Conversation”.  “Hiding in the history of the RFCs,” he said, “is the
history of human institutions for achieving cooperative work.”

So then, the RFC Editor is our scribe, our diarist, historian, and our
keeper of standards (in all senses of that phrase).  For more than three
decades, ISI and its dedicated staff - including Jon Postel, Joyce
Reynolds and Bob Braden - performed that role and for that we are all
deeply in your debt.

Russ Housley, IETF Chair
Olaf Kolkman, IAB Chair
Aaron Falk, IRTF Chair
Lynn St.Amour, President/CEO, Internet Society