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My friend Steve Crocker wrote RFC #1 at the dawn of the Internet, long before the letters IETF stood for anything. Now the NY Times has published Steve's Op-Ed commemorating the 40th Anniversary of RFC #1. This history, the story of how RFC #1 (and the RFC system, the IETF and the Internet) came to be, is history that those of us who care about preserving the Internet's most vital properties should know.

Here are several key paragraphs:

The early R.F.C.’s ranged from grand visions to mundane
details, although the latter quickly became the most
common. Less important than the content of those first
documents was that they were available free of charge
and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based
decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough
consensus and running code.” Everyone was welcome to
propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used
it, the design became a standard.

After all, everyone understood there was a practical
value in choosing to do the same task in the same way.
For example, if we wanted to move a file from one
machine to another, and if you were to design the
process one way, and I was to design it another, then
anyone who wanted to talk to both of us would have to
employ two distinct ways of doing the same thing. So
there was plenty of natural pressure to avoid such
hassles. It probably helped that in those days we
avoided patents and other restrictions; without any
financial incentive to control the protocols, it was
much easier to reach agreement.

This was the ultimate in openness in technical design
and that culture of open processes was essential in
enabling the Internet to grow and evolve as
spectacularly as it has. In fact, we probably wouldn’t
have the Web without it.

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