Parent issue: Short-lived references

Size (time): 6-18 months from start Importance/Urgency: Medium/Low

Problem Statement: Some normative references might not be long-lived enough from an archival perspective, and as a result, the RFC Editor may want to keep an archival copy. This could have significant copyright implications, details of which need to be understood before moving forward.

Current thinking of the RSE is that the RFC Editor should not be responsible for creating a document archive outside of the RFC directly. According to the new Style Guide, authors should be pointing to stable references, particularly for normative references. Those references do not need to be available online (though that is, I think, preferred by the readers) but they should be persistent. While the cost of the archive itself would be minimal in terms of disk space, the ongoing effort in determining whether copyright allows us to hold and distribute these documents is significant.

RSE Actions:

• Determine need for an archive
• Create cost/benefit analysis

RSOC Actions:

• Provide input on need, cost

RFC Production Center & Publisher Actions:

• Provide input on need, cost
• Implement if approved
• Create tools to return archived docs (possibly just html pointers?)

Costs/Benefits

Financial: minimal hardware costs, but would require a percentage of an FTE for review of copyright

Project schedules:

Reputation:

Estimated completion date: TBD