From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com]
It's not _that_ bizarre. Suppose that we decide to allow
publishing RFCs in PDF only. Suppose that within the next few
years some company comes up with a replacement for PDF that
is better is some important regard so that everyone switches
to the new format.
And suppose some Vogons came along and demolished the planet to make way for a
hyperspace bypass.
The idea that any of the formats being discussed will become impossible to read
is silly. There are billions of HTML document and hundreds of millions of PDFs
The folk at Google, the US Government and pretty much every online library
project are each going to make sure nothing of the kind happens for far more
obscure formats.
The output of the IETF is simply not that critical for this level of concern to
be warranted. RFCs are exactly that, requests for comment. The real standards
are and will always be set by running code.
Without continued maintenance the value of standards is quickly lost in any
case. RFC 822 has long since ceased to be the Internet email standard, it is of
historic interest only. The same is close to being the case for RFC 2822 as
well.
The underlying fallacy here is that the documents are holy scriptures, they are
not, they are merely an engineering tool to effect an engineering outcome.
Talk about what may happen in fifty or a hundred years time is simply an ego
trip. Its like those folk who in the dotcom boom took out million dollar key
man insurance. It had nothing to do with the damage that might be done to the
company if they died unexpectedly it was a pure ego trip from start to finish.
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