Do we really need version history of documents?
This is something that's been bugging me for awhile so I
thought I would throw it out there. "Is it really worth
keeping version history of documents?". Other than legal
reasons, I can't see why any would need version history of a
document. Source code. Sure. Absolutely. A document? I'm
beginning to think that there's no real reason why history
is that important.
Look at a document. Okay, so
you'll be able to go back in time and see that Joe added a
paragraph or something. If you use Office, this feature is
already built into the product. If it's a binary file of
some kind (like a PDF) you really can't compare or track
revisioning in the document (yes, Adobe had this feature but
you need special tools to use it). The only case I can see
is a text file where you can do diffs of the versions, but
then why would I really care?
Retaining history
seems to be so important to some, but I wonder if that's
really the case? Maybe take a look at your documents and try
to justify why you think you need a complete version
history. Is it really worth keeping in the long run?