Re: What's the plan for the user guide?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 14:52 +0000, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 14:06 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> > --- Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
> > > > I spoke to Brent on IRC who said Shaun has a plan
> > > to
> > > > rewrite the guide from scratch so it can be under
> > > a
> > > > different licence. (Ironic that the GFDL is
> > > rubbish
> > > > for Gnome user docs, really.)
> > > 
> > > Care to back this up? (URL?)
> > 
> > http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject_2fTasks
> > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2005-October/msg00014.html
> > 
> > Though surely this title business is a
> > misinterpretation of the license? Otherwise it's plain
> > nuts.
> 
> Rather the latter. This went so much out of its way.
> There are these people that complain but probably did not voice their
> concerns when GFDL was drafted. It's annoying when they do not even
> support/draft a new license; they just have this ''stop energy''.
> 
> I added my concerns on the live.gnome.org page.
> 
> Joachim, thanks for the links.

Version 1.1 of the GFDL is copyright March 2000.
If I had been involved at that time, and had had
the experience that I now have, you can be sure
I would have voiced my concerns at that time.

As it is, while Googling around for information
on older versions of the GFDL, I ran across this:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/linux-doc-project/mail_archives/ldp-discuss/msg01000.html

That's from January 2000, before the publication
of version 1.1, but presumably during the drafting
process.  Note that the concerns raised in that
email are exactly what we're talking about now:

* Invariant sections are evil.
* It's not interoperable with the GPL, or any
  other free software license for that matter.
* Many of its requirements are cumbersome for
  frequent modifications, particularly when
  done by frequently-changing authors.

Now, for the record, I don't think I've ever
proposed rewriting the User Guide for the sole
purpose of license evasion.  In fact, that's
a very difficult thing to do, because as soon
as you've read the current UG, you're tainted.

What I have proposed is making the UG less of
a book and more of a collection of topics.  But
I've proposed that for the entire documentation
stack. although I think it matters for the UG
more than anything else.

We don't have the infastructure for pluggable,
topic-oriented help right now, so everybody
please continue working on the documentation
we can actually ship and display.

--
Shaun