Today is the 40th anniversary of the Request For Comments, a form of memo used by the folks working on building what we today call the Internet. RFCs became how the team shared their ideas with others and got feedback before going forward with implementations.

The article linked to above was written by Stephen Crocker, the author of RFC 1. As Crocker notes, RFCs were at the core of the culture of openness and sharing of ideas and know-how, a culture that, while being constantly eroded by private interests, is still very present in today's online world.

The IETF hosts the collection of RFCs, a collection that continues to grow today (the latest added is rfc5423 Internet Message Store Events, added March 2009).

Further reading: Request for Comments (wikipedia)