On 8/2/19 8:50 PM, Bron Gondwana wrote:
One of the biggest challenges that
the IETF has is bringing in new blood, and one of the biggest
advantages of Github in particular is that it has a lot of
mindshare right now, so there are many people who know how to
use it and allowing them to interact with in-progress IETF
documents using tools they understand is a good way to bring
them in.
Understood. And I'm very glad to see more interest in IETF from the
open source community.
Having the process of joining the IETF be entirely learning a
custom workflow and custom tooling which only the IETF uses is a
recipe for isolation, and I would much rather see the IETF
embracing the tooling that the rest of the world is using rather
than running everything in isolation.
But this raises a problematic question - whose mindshare should
be favored? Should IETF favor github users over users of other
tools?
What about 10-20 years from now when some other tool is in
vogue? Should IETF then favor the new tool, or the one that its
then-established participants already know?
IETF originally had a history of trying to use tools that are
accessible to a wide potential participant base, but has been
departing from this for awhile:
- Email had the advantage of near-universal accessibility (at
least by people on the Internet, and even by some not on the
Internet). And it was/is easy to use.
- The web had a similar characteristic, once high-quality web
browsers became available on all major platforms.
- xml2rfc was and remains problematic. Sure, anyone can use a
web interface to the tools, but there's a significant learning
curve and often a lot of fighting to get the XML to conform to
the latest fad.
- Github not only imposes a learning curve for those who don't
already use it, there's also the risk of lockin to a tool that
we don't control, and potential privacy risks that at least need
to be evaluated (now, and in the future).
I very much want to attract open source developers (among many
other groups that could bring new energy). But to me there's
something very odd about IETF trying to favor github
users, especially at the expense of existing IETF participants and
at the expense of users of other systems. It's not like everybody
already uses git. Really, it's not. Lots of companies have
investment in other ways of maintaining source code, that either
pre-date or post-date git.
I'm not saying there's an easy or obvious answer, I'm just saying
that we shouldn't presume that github is the solution just because
it's currently popular, any more than we should presume that Word
is the solution for document editing or that meetings should
consist of Powerpoint presentations.
Keith
