This is definately a concern, and why I raise it here. The point of course is that currently, most of the updates to the database are performed by a small number of people, and most of the requests are from a wider community, so it shouldn’t be too bad (I hope). I would like to think that if a simple GUI tool were available, people would use it rather than write XML…
I would of course still look to export to Github, but I’m not sure it can be hooked directly to Github - it would more be an export function…
No - ESH requires the database to be within the JAR (although it might be possible to write something that allowed it to be outside, but it’s not how it is currently implemented)…
My concern with having the database outside of he JAR is quality control and version control - I’d be concerned that people would edit the database, and potentially screw something up, and the interaction with the Java side could get very messy. Currently the database includes options to make it work correctly with certain devices that have bugs (sorry - lets call them implementation features 
) and if you set these wrong, we end up with something not working.
My personal preference is for people to contribute directly in a simple way… I can understand the rational behind wanting an external database, but as a maintainer, the uncontrolled nature makes me worry I’ll have a lot more headaches with support 