Re: Writing free documentation/GNOME books

[Paul Dorman <pdorman ihug co nz>]

Hi All,

This is something I have been thinking about for some time. A really new
avenue for the open source community. I think several things need to be
done to make it really successful. First, some system needs to be
developed so that people who read the documentation online are able to
rate and annotate the information provided by the documentation. The
system should be web-based rather than text-based. Using the system
anyone could submit a sentence, a paragraph, or even a whole chapter to
the project. Initially, this might show up as, say, yellow text where
the author wants it. Those reading that new section will be able to rate
it according to how well it fits in with the purpose of the book. After
it surpasses some threshold it changes to, say, blue, and then others
may submit alterations and corrections which show up yellow. Two blocks
of text which say essentially the same thing can be linked graphically
so that people know to vote for one or the other. Anyway, I'm sure you
all see what I'm getting at. I think a graphical, evolutionary approach
is required. That way a book reaching verion 1.0 will be the very best
possible in the eyes of the community. Oh, and using the system, many
authors could help translate the book into any language they like.

Second, each book in the project should be well managed. Too much of the
documentation on the web is out of date, and too many authors lose
interest in maintaining the docs. This would be a big project. As large
as any in the community.

Third, in recognition that people like paper, the project arrange for
hard copies of the book once it reaches a major version number and only
if sufficient interest exists for hard copies of the book. Those who
want the book pay in advance, and that money is used to publish the
books and post the books. Perhaps sponsorship from businesses who work
within the open source community could be provided so that a surplus of
books can be printed. Those books would also be sold through the
project, but at a profit, and that profit would be fed back into the
community in the form of open source bounties, etc.

Best regards to all,
Paul Dorman.

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> Hello guys,
> 
>    For some time we have heard Richard Stallman talk about how
> important free documentation is for the GNU project.  GNOME is a
> perfect example of a system that needs documentation, and we are
> having a hard time documenting the system: writing tutorials, writing
> api definitions, users manuals and other types of documentation.
> 
>    Free documentation (Open Source documentation) is important for a
> number of reasons:
> 
>        1. If documentation is OpenSourced -we- can maintain the
>           documentation gradually even if the original author is no
>           longer interested in writing these books.
> 
>        2. Users can get online versions of the documentation with the
>           system.
> 
>        3. Documentation can be reused.  Just like software in other
>           books, or as part of a system documentation (ie, think
>           GNU/Linux distributions).
> 
>        4. People can reuse bits of the documentation in other projects
>           for the parts that apply.  They can reuse this documentation
>           for a possibly modified/extended version of the code, or to
>           reflect a branded-version of the code.
> 
>        5. We can put the books online on the web site.  We can create
>           comprenhensive web sites that have tutorials online that
>           people can link to from technical information and the other
>           way around.
> 
>    I had assumed for a long time that people who wrote books for
> publishing companies made piles of money and that this was the reason
> we could not get those books open-sourced.  Given that the authors of
> those books would get a lot of money for it.
> 
>    I recently talked to two very dear friends of mine who are working
> on two books about GNOME programming.  With two publishing companies.
> One company I will call A and the other I will call B.
> 
>    Both A and B are offering the authors of the books 1 dollar per
> book sold plus some money in advance which varies for books that are
> sold to the end user for something in the range of 25-40 dollars.
> 
>    Companies A and B have estimated selling something between 10k and
> 20k books.  Company A has shown some interested in exploring making
> the source open-source, but the last time I talked to them, they were
> no longer going to make the GNOME book free.
> 
>    I have also read this story that my friend Raph Levien pointed me
> to: http://photo.net/wtr/dead-trees/story.html
> 
>    Basically, I am very dissapointed with the book industry at this
> point.  Authors of books are not treated nicely, they are not payed
> enough, they do not get a good deal at all.
> 
>    The big winner here is the publisher: neither the book-purchaser,
> nor the book-writer, nor the community at large benefit.  It is pretty
> outrageous.  Now I understand why the Beatles wanted to create their
> own publishing company.  They get to keep most of the money from their
> work this way.
> 
>    Jim Gettys has pointed out that his book on X programming that was
> all the time free (open sourced) was published and that it was used to
> pay for his bills for a long time.  And it is still being sold, even
> if the source code for the book is available.
> 
>    So the idea here is that we should create a company that could pay
> authors better royalties per book, and get the results of the money to
> fund some software projects and documentation projects.
> 
>    I would personally like the FSF take over this, because they could
> invest some initial money for making this happen, but anyone can
> participate in this.
> 
>    I have created a mailing list for those interested in discussing
> possible setups for making this happen, to subscribe, type:
> 
>    echo subscribe | mail free-docs-publishing-request@nuclecu.unam.mx
> 
> It occurs to me that we can do a number of things, my first idea is:
> 
>    1. Get a list of topics that people would like to see.
>    2. Choose the ones that have the most demand.
>    3. Ask people for an "advanced" payment on the book.  There is
>       little to loose, say 30 dollars contribution.
>    4. Use the "advanced" payments to pay "main" authors, and give them an
>       advance so that they can devote to writing the book.
> 
> We want to get this setup bootstrapped as soon as possible of course.
> 
> ok, that is one idea.  I am sure people with more business experience
> can come up with better ideas.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Miguel.