Hard copy publishing of the guides | sec=unclassified

Wed Apr 5 22:44:17 UTC 2006

Ok, I'm replying to this from work so please excuse my lack of proper list etiquette.

On 4/5/06, Matthew East <matthew.east at breathe.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Robert Stoffers suggested via irc yesterday that it would be nice to set
> up some kind of mechanism for making hard copies of guides available. I
> think it's a really good idea. He suggested a publisher
> http://www.lulu.com which will make copies of the book as they are
> bought. So what happens is that if someone wants to buy a copy of the
> book, they pay, lulu publishes the copy, and sends it. It has the
> advantages that:
>
>  * There is no risk of people not buying the book, because only copies
> which are actually bought are produced.
>  * It's free for us because the customer pays the cost of production

The only cost involved will be the one the customer pays as Matthew has mentioned. I'd like to add that this cost will also be very low especially if we waive our royalties, Lulu will wave theirs in this case and all the customer has to pay is the actual production + shipping cost. As the Desktop Guide is a more concise guide I think users will want a hard copy of both this and the other guide that Ubuntu is writing.

>  * We have pdf versions, so we would simply send them that, and maybe
> ask the art team to produce a cover design.

We don't even have to send pdf version, we can just send them text if we want. I'd love to see the Art Team design the cover of the guide!

>
> As far as I can see, there is no real reason not to look into this. As
> Corey pointed out, yes there are other books available, but I think that
> there may be people who will want to read our guides on hard copy, and
> since giving them the possibility to do so is free for us and involves
> no risk, I don't see why we shouldn't do it.

There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't, I think there is some excellent talent in the Doc Team and the Desktop Guide at least has now had about 12 months and several sets of eyes looked over it. The many different translations will mean that we can offer all of these as hard copy printed books and sell them all over the world, we can do this cheaply and risk free too. 

I know not many other distributions do this with their work, but I think its simply a case of them not knowing much about it. Publishing though Lulu requires no change in licence for our docs, Lulu allow and in fact encourage people to use free licences for their work. I think once Ubuntu releases hard copy versions of its community created documentation other distributions will follow suit.
>
> Matt

> 1 - Completeness
> The Desktop Guide is far from a complete guide. It is good at what is
> covers, but has major holes in it. I would be embarrased to charge for
> it. It will also be compared, as a book, to the other Ubuntu books on
> the market. Lions and Circuses come to mind. The result will not be
> pretty for us.

This is hogwash. Instead of bitching about 'major holes' why have you not in the last 12 months contributed to the Desktop Guide instead? I believe you have a conflict of interest in this situation, you shouldn't be embarrassed as you have hardly even contributed to it.

> 2 - Dilution of Market
> We already have an official Ubuntu book. We are the official Ubuntu
> Doc Team. Having the official doc team publishing a book which is not
> the official book like quite amateurish. 

It would make sense to me that a 'official Ubuntu book' be in a big way contributed to by the Documentation Team. This has not happen for some strange reason, what is amateurish is the way you have decided to contribute to this guide *and be paid for it* and not involve the Documentation Team *AT ALL* in the creation of this 'official' guide. What should have happen is that everyone, paid by Canonical or not, worked on the *one guide* together, then distribute this under a free licence in the distro/online and allow Canonical to publish it however they saw fit. Merging the guides after the fact does not make up for your lack of professionalism in this situation.

> (For full disclosure, I am on
> the authors on the official book, but that has ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING to
> do with what I am saying here).

You can't say this and keep a straight face, can you? This is called 'conflict of interest'. Enough said.

> Basically, the problem boils down to making us look bad. 

Correction, it only makes you look bad as you decided *not* include the 'Official Ubuntu Documentation Team' in the creation of your 'Official Ubuntu Book'.

>Unless Canonical blesses something like this, which I don't seem them doing,
> it looks like we don't have our ducks in a row.

See above. Only you didn't get all your "ducks in a row". I believe for one that they will..

> Prentice Hall is going out a bit of limb to publish this Ubuntu book and release it
> under our licenses. Putting our stuff on Lulu would be basically
> shooting them in the back.

So go with O'Reilly or some other publisher. The guides have distinctly different targets from what I have seen, the Desktop Guide is a more concise pocketbook-style guide whereas the other guide covers a lot more/other ground.

> Corey

Most of you know that I haven't contributed myself to the Desktop Guide for a couple of months now. The main reason for this was lack of time due to the birth of my daughter as some of you already know. The other reason which I have not made public until now (to keep the peace) is that I lost motivation and interest once I heard other people such as Corey were going off on their own to profit and not involve us in any way in the creation of their own Ubuntu guide. Although this is about money among other things, I would have continued on writing for free as I had already been doing for some months prior and happily allowed Canonical itself to profit off my work. The fact that the Doc Team was not even consulted regarding the creation of this guide is insulting to me and it stinks, those involved in the dealings with this have acted rather unprofessionally in my opinion. 

Robert Stoffers
Ubuntu Documentation Team Member (rob1 at ubuntu.com)

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