On 01/26/2016 02:50 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
I am not a fan of making IETF processes dependent on technologies that don't "belong" to the IETF and I don't think it's a trivial concern, but if the IETF tools aren't working for us it makes sense to look outside for tools that do.
The IETF is two decades behind on using revision control in a systematic way, nowhere more significantly than in the area of drafts. At this point, anything reasonable we can do to improve the situation should be embraced.
Github is well established, and well respected (as others have pointed out already). While git is not my favorite VCS, it has the advantage of being able to trivially clone the repo, making any IETF "investment" there a safe bet.
There is a different, longer term question about whether the IETF should host its own services in this area. Given the perpetually constrained resources of our organization I think that if we can safely "outsource" functions where the potential benefits are great, and the risks are small, we should do that.
As for the concern about needing to learn how to use revision control creating a new barrier to entry for ID authors, at this point it's a marginal cost compared to nroff, xml2rfc, etc. You can do everything you need to do for something like this with git in 5 or 6 commands. The basic instructions for cloning a repo, checking in changes, etc. will fit on one sheet of paper (speaking from experience).
We should be doing everything we can to make progress in this area. Doug