I think the exact tools used are irrelevant to the discussion. If this style of publishing + maintaining older papers became popular, hopefully some better tool

I think the exact tools used are irrelevant to the discussion. If this style of publishing + maintaining older papers became popular, hopefully some better tools would spring up. For what it's worth, I think tools like ShareLaTeX and the like are much more usable for tracking changes in documents and enabling collaboration, especially with coauthors with little programming experience.