Subject: RFP for XML2RFC Tool Development

From: IETF Administrative Director <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:08:05 -0800 (PST)

The IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), on behalf of the IETF,
announces this Request for Proposals to develop the XML2RFC Tool.  The
successful bidder will enter into a contract with the Internet Society.

The xml2rfc tool is used by authors to compose Internet-Drafts, and by
the RFC Production Center to produce RFCs. This development effort is
intended to produce an xml2rfc tool that uses the same input format with a
few enhancements, is easy to install on a personal machine, and is easier
to maintain and enhance in the future.

Bidders may elect to submit one or two bids to reflect the development
approach they follow, that is, whether to develop a single program that
handles the xml2rfc input format and does all of the processing, and/or
develop software that handles the xml2rfc input format and then calls upon
other existing programs as needed to complete the overall task (such as
nroff or gruff).

The python language is preferred for software development. Proposals that
use other languages will be accepted, but the proposal must explain why a
language other than python is desirable for the tasks proposed.

The xml2rfc tool created under this effort shall generate output
comparable to the current version xml2rfc.tcl with the current version of
the DTD, fixes to the various issues that have been filed in and resolved
in the bug tracker, and the enhancements specified below. To the greatest
extent practical, the xml2rfc tools needs to accommodate changes by the
community to the DTD; several potential improvements are under discussion.

During development, the winning bidder may come up with ideas to further
improve the usability or maintainability of the xml2rfc tools.

The Statement of Work includes three sections. The first section
discusses xml2rfc processing. The second section describes required
enhancements to the current xml2rfc tool. The third section describes the
preferred nroff output, which is a bit different than the nroff output
produced by the current xml2rfc tool.

The RFP can be found at: http://iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html 

Proposals must be received via email at [email-masked] no later than
February 28, 2011 5:00 P.M. EST.  All questions/inquiries must be
submitted in writing and must be received no later than midnight, EST,
February 18, 2011.  Responses to questions and inquiries shall be posted
online at:  http://iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html by midnight, EST, February
22, 1011. 

The point of contact regarding this RFP is the IETF Administrative
Director, Ray Pelletier, [email-masked].