Re: A sad farewell

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 5 Nov 2020, at 17:08, Larry Masinter wrote:

> While github isn't THE answer, the "bespoke tools" developed to 
> support legacy workflows really DON'T matter that much.
> Google Docs, Dropbox, Microsoft Office, Acrobat, git.ietf.org might 
> all be options.
>
> Right now, IETF is in the unenviable position of imposing a serious 
> tax of attention for people who don't care about text formats to make 
> a contribution.

Larry, I apologize if this sounds harsh, but text formats have almost 
nothing to do with the bespoke tools and I don't think you really 
understand how our toolchain is being used or the breadth of functions 
being provided. Do any of the tools on your list, *without bespoke 
customization*, support working group document management along these 
lines?

- a tree of state management (with different trees for WG vs AD 
management; if you haven't looked at the document state tree, you should 
before answering the question)
- balloting by IESG, which integrates heavily with state management
- integration with meeting agendas (such that documents can appear as 
topic items, meeting materials can be managed, calendars can show 
pointers to those items and online meeting calls)...
- role-based ACL (ability to change different attributes or edit the 
document depending on whether you're the AD, chair, doc editor, doc 
shepherd, participant, review team member, etc.)
- review team assignments with due-date reminders and templates / forms 
for reviews

And the list goes on and on. Again, the text format of the documents has 
little to nothing to do with these issues.

If you're simply saying we should adjust our workflow to conform to some 
other tool, that seems completely backwards and I think the suggestion 
is misguided. If you're saying that it will just take some 
customizations of these other tools to accomplish what we want, I think 
you wildly underestimate the amount of customization that will be 
needed.

Yes, there are loads of ways we can and probably should integrate things 
like git document management and other editing tools into our toolchain. 
And the tools team has done those sorts of integrations for many years. 
But the suggestion that it is so simply replaced is seriously 
misunderstanding the tools we have and our workflows.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best