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Internet RFC Series Turn 50 (circleid.com)
An anonymous reader writes: This week marks the 50th anniversary for the Internet "Request for Comments" (RFC) series, which started in April 1969 with the publication of RFC1 titled "Host Software" authored by Stephen D. Crocker. The early RFCs were meant to be requests for comments on ideas and proposals, says Heather Flanagan, RFC Series Editor. Today over 8500 RFCs have been published, ranging from best practice information, experimental protocols, informational material, to Internet standards. An RFC has been published to mark the fiftieth anniversary to include retrospective material from individuals involved at key inflection points, as well as a review of the current state of affairs.
If you want to strike fear into any seasoned developer's heart, specify "RFC-conforming implementation" as a hard requirement.
While RFCs offer much-needed push toward standardization, modern RFCs tend to be overly complex and often contradictory. Even standard implementations do not achieve 100% conformance. For example, OpenSSL and its widely-used TLS implementation does not 100% implement all SHALLs of RFC 5246 (TLS v1.2). Conformance to RFC 5280 (PKI) is especially abysmal, I know of no solution that comes even close to meeting all of it.