RFC

RFC /R-F-C/ n.  [Request For Comment] One of a
   long-established series of numbered Internet informational
   documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and
   freeware in the Internet and UNIX communities.  Perhaps the single
   most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet mail-format
   standard).  The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by
   technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by
   the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an
   institution such as ANSI.  For this reason, they remain known as
   RFCs even once adopted as standards.

   The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact
   standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has
   important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process
   typical of ANSI or ISO.  Emblematic of some of these advantages is
   the existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually
   at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st.  Well-known
   joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22
   June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin;
   1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP
   Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April
   1990).  The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody
   of the TCP-IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan
   skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for
   transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon.

   The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they manage
   to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal
   specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that
   often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has
   grown to truly worldwide proportions.