Re: IETF hosting vs. Github

[Willy Tarreau <[e-mail]>]

Stéphane,

On Tue, Jun 08, 2021 at 09:42:16AM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 12:42:40PM -0700,
>  Roy T. Fielding <[e-mail]> wrote 
>  a message of 45 lines which said:
> 
> > > (And having important discussions on a Microsoft platform not
> > > controlled by the IETF is a bad idea, anyway, but I digress.)
> > 
> > The IETF does not have the resources to provide a comparable issue
> > tracking system, let alone one that manages PRs and version control
> > for authors, while providing extensive search capabilities at the
> > same time. It's a tool.
> 
> The IETF has a budget of ten million US dollars
> <https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-2021-draft-budget/> and cannot
> self-host a Gitlab or a Gitea? It is hard to believe.

Like Roy said, it's a tool. I personally don't like it much essentially
for UI concerns which I find difficult to use and sadly, these trouble
were replicated by their competitors, but what I like even less is having
to deal with plenty of accounts everywhere. Github, like it or not, has
become a de-facto standard and plenty of people active in the HTTP
ecosystem already have an account on it, which fluidifies interactions
compared to another approach where one will always have to ask "what's
my account again?".

I personally don't care about what tools the IETF (and the WG) are using,
I'm pretty sure that the various tools run on servers built by large
companies, running processors, RAM and storage designed and built by
other large companies, and that data are transmitted over wires/fibers
also operated by various large companies, maybe even encrypted and signed
using certificates issued by large companies. As long as the service is
delivered, that's what matters to me.

One concern could be that all discussions in issues would need to be
archived though (I don't know if they are nor how to do that). Because
my personal feeling is that while relying more on issues has significantly
improved the focus and reduced bikeshedding, it has also significantly
reduced exposure to certain points, and we don't have the archives of
these discussions anymore in our respective mailboxes. But this is
something unrelated to the tools but to the process, and Gitlab or any
other tool wouldn't change anything to this.

Regards,
Willy