Sec: Unclassified RE: proposal for our repositorystructure post-breezy

[Stoffers, Robert LAC]

On Tuesday 18 October 2005 21:07, Troy Williams wrote:
> I have not faded away, although it would appear that way.  I have not
> had the luxury of being particularly active the past couple of months
> due to increased responsibilities at work, but I continue to read every
> post to this list, pop into irc from time-to-time and make the
> occasional tweak to a doc/wiki page.
>
> My plan is to be able to participate more actively very soon.  Just
> wanted to chime-in on the side of Kubuntu documentation.

> Hello Troy,
> 
> Good to hear from you.
> 
> Seems that people see my wanting to fork the kubuntu-docs as a bad thing. 
> Strange how people always read negative into things. Anyway, I appreciate 
> that yourself and others have busy schedules. I am also running like crazy to 
> keep work going, hence I also had to step away from the kubuntu-doc project. 
> 
> My reasoning for wanting the move is that I feel kubuntu-doc needs a home of 
> its own. I voice it here so that others will discuss and debate with open and 
> unemotional mind on the topic. I look to find what is best for the 
> Kubuntu-doc project.
> 
> Kubuntu-docs is presently totally over shadowed by Ubuntu-doc and I think it 
> will remain so as long as it stays in ubuntu. I may be wrong, but I think 
> that other distributions trying to work in the same way will also be over 
> shadowed. Ubuntu is just to big. I have felt that people wanting to do work 
> on the smaller side often feel over whelmed by the size and activity of 
> Ubuntu. Somebody once asked, something to the effect of,  "Why does working 
> on kubuntu-docs feels like you are working on the arse end of the world?"  I 
> can't remember who, but it must be in the archives.
> 
> Anyway, as the person who first started to muster support for doing 
> kubuntu-docs, I am reflecting on the project and trying to see what will make 
> it work better. The course of breezy development has drawn me to the 
> conclusion that if it is ever to step out from the shadow of Ubuntu it must 
> make a presence of its own.
> 
> Naturally, I in no way own the project and people are totally entitled to 
> disagree. Should people feel that the current arrangement is working just 
> swell, then they are still free to continue. My intention is not to hinder. I 
> am just daring to ask questions based on my observations and feels. I do 
> realize that suggesting a split in this forum such as this with such a high 
> loyalty to Ubuntu, may be asking for trouble, but I also feel that we need to 
> be free to actually look at what we are doing once in awhile and decide how 
> to proceed. INHO no time is better than just after a release, that is why I 
> have not mentioned this until now.


One of the reasons behind the suggestion I made about changing the layout of svn is to allow Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu and any new projects after that to do their own thing without being over shadowed by Ubuntu. Any new contributors can easily pick what project they want to work on, and it won't effect to any great deal the efforts of other projects. 

Mostly I don't agree with forks, but in this case its most likely the best outcome as far as Kubuntu is concerned. Whist working on the Ubuntu FAQ Guide I would have found it easier to also work on the Kubuntu FAQ Guide if they were separate. Between the two there are a lot of differences, the few things that are the same (such as codecs) can just be copied and pasted between the two, or we can set up a file/s in /generic/faq that both versions of the FAQ Guide can pull common information out of. This is probably the most cost effective way of having docs for different project without duplicating work, but obviously it will require more team work and communication between the projects.

So I'm happy if Sean wants to fork the FAQ Guide for this and anything else (some of which he has already done). I expect the same to happen with Xubuntu soon too.

Regards,

-- 
Robert Stoffers
Author/Maintainer - Ubuntu FAQ Guide
Email - rstoffers at gmail.com