Clarify RFC lifecycle

[birkenfeld]

No description provided.

[markus-zolliker]

If I understand correctly, a provisional RFC number is assigned at the start on the pull request (1.) - and then renumbering might happen when the pull request is merged. Why not just keep the initially assigned number?

[birkenfeld]

The problem is when multiple RFCs are in the pull request state, there is no good way to find out which number is free.

An alternative would be to immediately commit the PR, but then the nice place to discuss the document is gone :)

Or, ask to always make the PR with number zero, and assign a number when merging.

We could also commit an initial placeholder that only contains the filename (=number) and metainfo, and then add the content in a PR, but that is not possible for external people without pull requests.

[markus-zolliker]

OK, I unterstand now. But I think we should get quickly to point (3). I would say it should suffice that if one member of the committee (in addition to the proposer, which might be external) agrees that it is worth to discuss the proposal, the pull request should be merged.
Sure, this should happen only after a minimum period of discussion (say a week). We should not wait for a committee meeting for this decision.

[birkenfeld]

Ok. The only reason why having an open PR is nice, is that it's easy to discuss on the issue, including annotations to the text etc.