Clarifying the Historical Record for RFC 32
draft-flanagan-rfc32alt-00

Abstract

This document identifies an issue found in the historical record of the RFC Series with regards to RFC 32, a number issued to two separate documents in the early days of the Series. This document serves as a reference point such that errata can be registered against those RFCs that refer to RFC 32.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Conflict Description and Resolution
• 2. Informative References
• Appendix A. Acknowledgements
• Author's Address

1. Conflict Description and Resolution

This document describes an issue found in the historical record as captured in the RFC Index of the RFC Series with regard to RFC 32: a number issued to two separate documents in the early days of the Series. This document serves as a reference such that errata can be registered against those RFCs that refer to either document assigned the identifier RFC 32.

The blog series "365 Days of RFCs" by Darius Kazemi included discovery of the fact that while the RFC Editor index referred to "Some Thoughts on SRI's Proposed Real Time Clock" by Jerry Cole as [RFC0032], other RFCs later in the series instead referred to "Connecting M.I.T. Computers to the ARPA Computer-to-Computer Communication Network" by Dietrich Vedder via the same RFC identifier. While there are theories around how this happened, absolute certainty regarding the cause of the duplicate identifier issuance is unlikely to be uncovered this many years after the fact.

For the sake of clarifying the historical record, “Some Thoughts on SRI's Proposed Real Time Clock” will continue to be recorded as RFC 32 in the index of RFCs managed by the RFC Editor. The document "Connecting M.I.T. Computers to the ARPA Computer-to-Computer Communication Network", is hosted (with permission from the author) on the RFC Editor website [NWG-RFC32]. All RFCs that refer to the either the Cole document or the Vedder document will have an errata issued in order to capture the discrepancy and point individuals to the correct document.

2. Informative References

Appendix A. Acknowledgements

With many thanks to Darius Kazemi for identifying the issue described in this document.

Author's Address