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

[Alexander Shopov <ash contact bg>]

> I am neither a Debian developer nor a Debian user.
Neither am I.

> Although
> I often try out various distributions, just to see how Gnome
> looks across the board,

As I am the committer of the Bulgarian Gnome translation team, I' ve had
to hunt down one or two bugs/quirks in Debian to improve the experience
of Bulgarian users.

> I've been considering a change of license since before Debian
> first raised their FDL concerns, and I've been strongly in
> favor of a change since before Debian's recent ultimatum.

My practical issues for a license change is that the Bulgarian
translation team has translated the 2.6 Gnome Manual and updated some
sections to the new versions. The translations have not been committed
to Gnome CVS due to both my lack of time and my inability to understand
how exactly to convert our version which was generated via a Wiki to a
version that could be committed back to the CVS.

I am not in favor of having to retranslate something of the same size or
have to think of ways to relicense translations.

I am fine with not having this translation appear in Windows Vista and I
am similarly fine with having it in the non-free section of Debian.

> Debian's primary objections are the quirky language around
> the DRM and transparent copy stuff, as well as the usage of
> invariant sections.

Debian is not a single entity - it is comprised of its developers and
not everyone agrees that there are in fact such issues. Thus - I would
not accept your statement as valid.
More formally - what you are saying has not been voted by Debian and is
not their official position yet. Let us not give strength to one of
their internal groups by identifying the objections of some individuals
with the whole society of Debian.
As we both are not Debian developers - it is not up to us and this is
not the mail list for such discussions. My concern is that the internal
Debian turmoils do not overflow over to Gnome documentation.

> My issues with the FDL are more with its requirements with
> respect to revision history and such.

I am not a specialist in these issues. I will try to get more
information on this.

> Furthermore, with the long-term goal of having pluggable
> help files, it won't even be immediately clear where one
> document ends and another begins.  Using the FDL, we'll
> have to start maintaining revision history on a per-topic
> basis, and Yelp will have to provide all sorts of mumbo
> jumbo to allow documents to be compliant.

Are not all manuals versioned in CVS? Are there no commit logs? But I
might be mistaken, I will read more on this.

> What we need is a simple copyleft license that does not
> impose undue restrictions on modification.  Basically,
> anything beyond maintaining visible contributor credits
> is just too much.  It would also be nice to have built-in
> provisions for allowing reuse of code samples in contexts
> outside the documentation.

Is there a consensus for such a license to be GFDL compatible?

> Also, I know it's become popular lately on Planet Gnome
> and desktop-devel-list to be hostile and accusational,
> and to call things stupid and call people names.  But I
> will not have it on my list.

I have just barely scratched the surface of my flame-heated,
bile-o'erbrimmed, hornet-infested oven.
There is a saying that the wiser (or more civilized) one yields, but
sometimes I find such attitude extremely frustrating and
counterproductive (at least - when I take the role of the wiser or more
civilized one).

Kind regards:
al_shopov