[jibal]

Please please please mention that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel (aka "god of the Internet") was the RFC editor--he did a huge amount of work to make it a success.

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

"The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them."

[ackreq]

Thanks a lot for sharing these informations. I’ll update the post accordingly within 24 hours after I’ve read them.

[jibal]

Note this in his WP article:

"Postel was the RFC Editor from 1969 until his death, and wrote and edited many important RFCs, including RFC 791, RFC 792 and RFC 793, which define the basic protocols of the Internet protocol suite, and RFC 2223, Instructions to RFC Authors. Between 1982 and 1984 Postel co-authored the RFCs which became the foundation of today's DNS (RFC 819, RFC 881, RFC 882 and RFC 920) which were joined in 1995 by RFC 1591 which he also co-wrote. In total, he wrote or co-authored more than 20 RFCs.[12]"

And from the RFC article:

"From 1969 until 1998, Jon Postel served as the RFC editor. On his death in 1998, his obituary was published as RFC 2468.[12]" (written by Vint Cerf)

"Beginning with the ARPANET, an endless stream of networks evolved, and ultimately were interlinked to become the Internet. Someone had to keep track of all the protocols, the identifiers, networks and addresses and ultimately the names of all the things in the networked universe. And someone had to keep track of all the information that erupted with volcanic force from the intensity of the debates and discussions and endless invention that has continued unabated for 30 years. That someone was Jonathan B. Postel, our Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, friend, engineer, confidant, leader, icon, and now, first of the giants to depart from our midst."

"Bearded and sandaled, Jon was our resident hippie-patriarch at UCLA. "

Actually, Jon often padded around the CompSci department at Boelter Hall barefoot.

"He leaves a legacy of edited documents that tell our collective Internet story, including not only the technical but also the poetic and whimsical as well."

[jibal]

You might want to read https://www.google.com/books/edition/Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_L...

[ackreq]

Sure thing, I will. Thanks again for your previous comments. I’ll do my best to include them in the post.

[jibal]

Also see https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2441

   "One can also read that Jon was the editor of the RFC, and may think
   that Jon checked only the grammar or the format of the RFCs.  Nothing
   could be further from the truth, not that he did not check it, but in
   addition, being the corporate memory, Jon had indicated many times to
   authors that earlier work had treated the same subject, and that
   their work would be improved by learning about that earlier work."

...

" Our foundation and infrastructure of standards was the secret weapon that won the war. Jon created it, using the RFC mechanism initiated by Steve Crocker. It was Jon who immediately realized their importance, and the need for someone to act as the curator, and volunteered.

   The lightning speed with which Microsoft joined the Internet was not
   possible without the quality of the existing standards that were so
   well documented.

   During the transition from ARPA, through the NSF, to the commercial
   world there was a point in which the trivial funding required for the
   smooth operation of editing and distributing the RFCs was in doubt.
   At that time the prospect of not having funds to run this operation
   was very real.  Finally the problem was solved and the process
   suffered no interruption.

   What most of the involved agencies and managers did not know is that
   there was never a danger of any interruption.  Jon would have done it
   even with no external funding.  If they did not pay him to do it, he
   would have paid them to let him do it.  For him it was not a job, it
   was labor of love."

" When fancy formatting creeped into the Internet community, Jon resisted the temptation to allow fancy formats for RFCs. Instead, he insisted on them being in ASCII, easy to e-mail, guaranteed to be readable anywhere in the world. The instant availability and usability of RFCs was much more important to him than how fancy they looked."

[ackreq]

I’ve updated the post accordingly and mentioned more names, Jibal. I also referenced our conversation here, thanks again. The revised post should be visible now, though sometimes clearing cookies helps if it doesn’t show up right away

[ekr____]

I think there's a fair argument to be made that this was a bad decision on Postel's part, because it made it harder to have good diagrams as well as mathematical formula, and of course it also meant that we couldn't render many people's names correctly. In any case, RFCs are now published in HTML and allow non-ASCII characters.

[jibal]

Also take a look at https://www.rfc-editor.org/ ... RFCs are still actively being written ... it looks like 9 were added this month.