From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
RFC
/R?F?C/, n.
[Request For Comment] One of a long-es?tab?lished 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 (since actually implemented; see Appendix
A). See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work ? they frequently
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.
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]:
RFC
Remote Function Call (SAP, CPIC)
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]:
RFC
Request For Comments (Internet, RFC)
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]:
RFC
Request For Change (PERL, ITIL)
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