RFCs are written and discussed, but there’s no mechanism by ...

RFCs are written and discussed, but there’s no mechanism by which they’re formally adopted or rejected. Organizations choose to implement them (or don’t); they become standards through widespread voluntary adoption.

This means that, if engineering organizations naively adopt an RFC process without bolting on some sort of explicit decision-making step, the process quickly breaks down. Without some sort of process to move towards a decision, the default outcome of an RFC is “no”

The team operating an RFC process inside a company must bolt on their own decision-making process. Usually, that’s via authority.

This is also why I personally stray away from a true RFC process at work - it’s built for decentralization and long time-scales, while a corporate setting is tightly centralized and biased to speed.

www.joshbeckman.org/notes/638704761