Hard copy publishing of the guides | sec=unclassified

[Corey Burger]

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

Yes, I haven't contributed that much. I would like to contribute more,
but I, as are the rest of us, busy and need to divide our time wisely.
However, I can still be embarrased about a product I feel is good but
not great.

> > 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.

Yes I can. Even if I was not one of the authors, I would be saying the
same thing. Part of it has to do with the fact that the book exists,
not who is writing it. Also, see my 2nd to last paragraph.

>
> > 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'.

See my response below.

>
> >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.

A pocket guide would be cool. I don't think the Desktop Guide is that
(it could be, it just isn't). As an aside, OReilly already has an
Ubuntu book coming out, Ubuntu Hacks. Looks very cool.

> 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.

For the record, I was approached by Debra at Prentice Hall directly.
It was very much unexpected and I certainly did not go around looking
to work on a book, let alone an official one. Working on this book has
been simultaneously the hardest and most enjoyable activity I have
done recently.

For me, I am overjoyed about what will happen after the book is
published. The complete book is going to be released under our
licenses and likely go into our repo. All the great work Jono and Mako
and others (including myself) have been doing will be avaiable for us
to play with.

Our docs for Dapper+1 are going to kick ass. We might also want to see
if we can push a copy of the book as an upgrade onto Dapper machines.
So lets stop focusing on this stop energy issue and look at what the
great things we are doing now (like the Packaging Guide) and the great
things will have in the future (the Book).

Cheers,

Corey