[Tools-arch] Draft RFP SoW for "Review of the current landscape of IETF document processing tools"

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

In support of the work of the Tools Architecture and Strategy Team (TAS), an RFP will be issued for a "Review of the current landscape of IETF document processing tools".  A draft SoW is below and I welcome your comments/feedback on it.

Jay


# Overview
The IETF seeks a contractor to review the current landscape of tools that have been specifically designed to be used by the IETF community to work with IETF documents (I-Ds and RFCs) and to build a dataset about these tools, including technical details, maintenance processes, licensing and others, and further to determine what parts of the document production, management and usage lifecycle each tool supports.

# Deliverables

## Dataset
This data is to be presented in a table using simple scales and classifications in addition to any supporting narrative.  For example, for licensing, a simple classification may include "GPL v3, Proprietary, BSD-like" and more.

The data to be collected is:

1.  A full catalog of tools, including all the relevant tools at https://tools.ietf.org and other tools that are not listed there but are known to be in use.   The contractor will be responsible for drawing up the list, which will then be reviewed, possibly iterated and approved.

2.  Details of the maintainer(s) of each tool

3.  The licensing of the tool (simple classification)

4.  The technical environment each tool is intended to work in (OS, packages, containers, etc)

5.  How each tool is maintained, including
- where the source code is located
- how issues are raised (simple classification)
- the level of version control and release management in use (on a simple scale)
- how comprehensive the test coverage is (on a simple scale) 
- the form of testing framework in use (simple classification)

6.  A subjective assessment of the current maintained state of the tool (on a simple scale)

6.  A subjective assessment of the suitability of each tool (on a simple scale), based on 3, 4, 5 and 6 above.

7.  What stages of the document lifecycle (see below) each tools covers.

## Document lifecycle
As part of this work, the contractor will need to construct a model of the IETF document lifecycle including document production (authoring, review, format conversion, etc), document access (download tools, search tools, etc) and document usage (extracting certain parts, etc).  This is only to cover the work carried out by the IETF community and not the work of the RFC Production Centre.

There are no templates for this model and it is expected that there will be two or three review and and change cycles.

## Coverage map
The information collected above is additionally to be presented in some form of map showing each tool and each stage, the coverage of each stage in the lifecycle and the subjective assessment of the suitability of each tool.




-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]