Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
Having an RFC makes it an Internet standard
As stated in FAQ #3 at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcfaq.html, this is
not actually true. It is an extremely widely-spread misconception.
An RFC is an Internet standard if and only if the RFC actually says so.
Take, for example, RFC 854 (
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc854.html): it
states explicitly at the top that it is an Internet standard. In
contrast, RFC 2549 (
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html) specifically
mentions that "It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind."
Now, in the case of that latter RFC this is not much of a surprise (it's
one of numerous April Fool's jokes among the RFCs), but it may come as a
surprise to a great many people that the same sentence is contained in
the PNG RFC:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2083.html
Greetings,
Timwi