Re: polarization

["John R. Sheets" <dusk ravendusk org>]

On Thursday, November 02, 2000, Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com> wrote:
>
> It's a possibility, yes. However, I would rather see member companies
> finance members of a documentation team. One problem with a book like
> mine is that it isn't actively maintained; what we need more is an
> active documentation team that's constantly keeping things up-to-date,
> and has lots of people involved. The GDP is pretty good at this,
> though they haven't attempted a book yet.

[...]

> The foundation itself would not be qualified to contract an author
> directly to write a book; there are lots of administrative issues,
> you'd need an editor, and you'd want better distribution channels than
> the FSF has. So I would want to see us work with a publisher of some
> kind if we did this.

I'd like to suggest my fledgeling project http://openbooks.sourceforge.net 
as a potential medium for book-length open licensed documentation, as
well as a forum for connecting authors with open-minded publishers.
Also as a central location for actively maintaining these books.  My
hope is that OpenBooks will help answer your questions above.

Since OpenBooks only supports book-length docs, it should exist in peace
with GDP -- or even as an affiliate of GDP, or something similar (I
wouldn't want to limit OpenBooks to GNOME-only topics, though I imagine
GNOME will make up most of its content in practice).

I apologize for the topic drift...  (c;  I'm subscribed to
gnome-doc-list, if anyone would like to follow up there.

> In fact we had and still have substantial disagreement on this list
> about whether the foundation should have any significant funds at all.
> The archives will have that discussion, you probably saw it.

I agree that the foundation shouldn't fund development or documentation
efforts.  Aside from that, I think both Havoc and Bruce are raising very
good points, and I for one would like to see _both_ points of view on
the board.  I don't think these issues should be resolved by election,
but rather by further debate within the board itself, as it matures and
reacts to the industry.

I also hope that these board debates will take part (when possible) in
public forums like this one.

John

-- 
dusk ravendusk org                            http://www.gnome.org
jsheets codeweavers com                  http://www.worldforge.org
               http://advogato.org/person/jsheets