[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 76, Issue 6

[Bob Braden]

Dave Crocker wrote:
    ... It's almost interesting to wonder whether casting  the RFC 
Editor as "shaping" the Internet is reasonable phrasing... (We need to 
be careful to distinguish Jon's RFC Editor work from his many /non/-RFC 
activities, when considering this question.)

d/


Indeed. Besides his formal RFC Editor duties, Jon had the informal 
titles of "Protocol Czar", and  "Guardian of Good [protocol] Taste". 
(Jon did not believe in czars, so I think he preferred the latter)
On the other hand, it was largely his official RFC Editor role that gave 
Jon the leverage to actually guard the good taste of the Internet 
protocol suite. I think the rest of the reason he got away with being a 
protocol autocrat was that the rest of us had such deep respect for 
Jon's judgment. He set a standard of good sense and consistency that has 
served us well. He ironed out the wrinkles in the protocols, and he 
famously pronounced pithy principles. For example, I recall his saying 
that when you are deciding whether to include a particular field or bit 
in a protocol header, if you cannot explain fairly accurately what a 
receiver should do when it receives that field, you should deep-six it. 
I suspect he generalized this principle from the source quench example, 
but it might go back to the "rubber EOL" feature in early TCP.

Bob Braden