CC meeting preliminary notes

[sparkes]

John Hornbeck wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 08:15 +0100, sparkes wrote:
>
> I think you took my whole statement wrong. 
My words also look a little strong on reflection and I apoligise if they 
caused any offence but I stand by their meaning ;-)

> I would like people to help
> and contribute but I don't think a setting where "everyone" can
> contribute is the right setting. 

Not sure we are speaking the same language here ;-) we are talking about 
linux right ;-)  a community that came together, a meritocracy?  surely 
everyone has an equal right to contribute and one or more act as editors 
based upon their skills.

> I wish to have people contribute and
> work with people, and give them credit, but at the same time I like to
> set my standards high.  

Everyone wants to keep standards high and that is an editing job, in 
this case

> If you start with writing a book on a wiki, you
> lose control right away.  

It really depends on what you mean by control.  Some things develop 
better without formal control and others need some formal control.  I 
think this project is somewhere in the middle.

> Even with freesoftware as a whole, you can
> modify and do with it what you want but the developer still has the
> final say when it comes to releaseing the actual product under its said
> name.  

not as good an analagy as it looks on first inspection.  If a persons 
patch isn't accepted in a freesoftware package but they believe it has 
merit they are free to fork the project and include their patch.  If 
others agree the fork has merit it survives, prospers and sometimes even 
replaces the original project in the eyes of the community.

Sometimes this is a bad thing, sometimes this is a good thing. 
Sometimes it's a great thing for both projects (such as debian and 
ubuntu) but in docs this would be a bad thing.  To have several people 
working together as part of a community would be far better than having 
one on their own.

A community effort such as ubuntu deserves a commnunity led 
documentation project and that goes for printed docs as well.  Plus as a 
thank you to debian I believe every effort should be made to make the 
docs usable upstream as well.  I still think the debian/progeny guide is 
the ideal starting point.

I would be interested in hearing why you think it's not (as mentioned in 
the other thread).  Plus it's available under a free licence and many 
changes would benefit upstream.  Ubuntu is not an island it's part of 
the debian family and I personally would like to contribute to works 
that are part of our thank you to the debian devs that have made all of 
this possible over the last 10 years.

> I am looking at a free license, I really like how "Free as In
> Freedom", is done where it is all online but still a paper copy, I own
> that book and have still read it online.

I should hope so ;-) you wouldn't get much support from  old debianites 
in the ubuntu crew for just taking and not giving ;-)

> 
> 	I am not trying to cut the "Ubuntu" out of this, but I feel writing it
> on the wiki is the wrong place.

I see this entirely differently.  I believe you have to give some more 
thought to how you are going to work on the book project to make sure it 
stays a part of the community and not something on the fringes.

I agree that the wiki might not be the best choice.  Splitting the work 
into chunks and keeping them in a subversion server might be better but 
I do think community over the individual everytime

I could said yes to writting and unoffical book but choose to help the 
documentation project instead ;-) I think you will have some difficulty 
making both work.

> 
> 
> 
> John Hornbeck
> http://hornbeck.freeshell.org/blogger
> 
sparkes