Roman, Keith, Two small additions to parts of your recent comments... --On Thursday, November 26, 2020 14:39 +0000 Roman Danyliw <rdd@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > Unlike John, we had discussed a broad array of content, so I > also want to point out that the ftp.rfc-editor.org site has > different content that ftp.ietf.org -- RFCs and I-Ds are > there. However, for example, the mailing list archives and > charters are NOT on the rfc-editor site. I am personally not very concerned about FTP access to mailing list archives (which are becoming less useful as some efforts are shifted to github and similar "living" repositories) or charters. Personally, I'd be happier if we took "expired" seriously such that, after some reasonable grace period, such I-Ds were part of a separate repository and required significantly more effort to get to than clicking on a link in the datatracker that says "A copy of the expired Internet-Draft can be found at...". However, I'm quite sure after other rounds of discussions that I'm in the rough about that. I would also be happier if there were a good mechanism (whether via HTTP, rsync, or FTP that make it convenient to retrieve current versions only (neither FTP --including LIST or NLST and local grep-- nor rsync are good at that). Consequently, if an FTP repository consisted only of I-Ds that were current or that had expired, without being replaced, more than, say, six months previously, I'd be quite happy. But I'm probably in the rough about that too. Keith's rather nice list of functionality available via FTP that is not readily available through HTTP and the datatracker in https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/ukTEvRqPF-91riLLjyJEy20T2Q8 is relevant here. But there is another tradeoff in that situation. For me (although I'm guessing not for Keith, Lyndon, and some others), my need for FTP access to I-Ds would go down another notch if, when I did a search in the datatracker and got back a multiple-document list, it gave me checkboxes for format preferences and to identify the documents I wanted and then allowed me to click something to automagically retrieve/download that collection of documents. Today, I have to either pull up the page for one document at a time, download or view it, and then go back to the listing for the next document while, with FTP, if some conditions are met, I can pull the lot in one operation. [1] And... --On Thursday, November 26, 2020 09:45 -0500 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > More broadly, this conversation has convinced me that IETF > cannot be relied on to provide the tools that IETF > participants need, and in fact that IETF management has become > hostile to participation in IETF by some kinds of people. > So if IETF is going to continue to be a viable consensus-based > standards-making organization, either the management needs to > do a significant about-face in its attitude toward > participation, or IETF participants need to take on the burden > of providing those tools. The problem with the latter is that, unless the participant is part of an organization that is willing and able to provide a long-term commitment, you end up with your archive, I end up with my archive, Lyndon ends up with his, etc. We might be willing to share our archives with a few hundred of our closest friends, but the arrangements are inherently unstable _and_ cause us, each the extra work and operational complexity "the IETF" wants to shed. That is why I asked the question long ago about what the actual operational costs of the IETF running/ retaining the FTP service are (don't think I ever got an answer that I could use): If we had a number and it realistically represented marginal costs, at least a few of us much be willing to buy into it on a fee for service subscription basis, considering such a service with long-term guarantees and an SLA to be much cheaper (because of economies of scale if nothing else) and more convenient than doing it ourselves. More generally, people who believe the IETF has become hostile to their participation have an option that you didn't mention. That is to take the work they are interested in to other organizations and standards bodies. If those bodies consider it in their interest (even if just to make their standards relatively more credible), such people might help them identify the perceived hostility of the IETF to other points of view or ways of working and the consequent lack of broad perspective in its standards-making activities. I hope that, before getting to point of taking such actions, the people who feel that way have explained the problem to the Nomocm and that, if they did not do so before the nominal cutoff at the end of the IETF week, the Nomcom can be persuaded to listen. best, john [1] It may or may not be relevant that ISO's TC eCommittee mechanisms and the "livelink" mechanisms used by several National Member Bodies as part of their secretariat functions for TCs -- many of which would probably give a very blank look it someone said "FTP" to them00 provide exactly that type of functionality. Speaking for myself only, I find it a tad depressing that they are ahead of us.
