Lyndon, your email brings up the central issue from the other side:
I have a cluster of systems using FTP to mirror I-D's. Just the .txt and index files. This is trivial to perform with FTP, and I've been running the same FTP-based mirror script for over a decade. The cluster I use doesn't support rsync, and likely never will
the issue at stake is technical debt, and specifically who pays for it: ietf llc, or ietf stakeholders.
Your argument is the same as that of several other people, i.e. there's technical debt on your side and your preference would be for someone else to shoulder some or all of this.
This is not a criticism, btw, and it's something we can all relate to: everyone has technical debt. It doesn't matter whether it's a large enterprise - where technical debt might form part of the financials - or if it's granny, whose desktop is still running XP, and where all the maintenance is handled by her grandchild - payment in cookies. The only question we struggle with is when it's reasonable for us to shoulder the costs, and when we can expect others to.
Nick
