Hard copy publishing of the guides

[Matthew East]

Ok, just trying to focus this thread away from individuals and back into
a constructive direction, I think we can identify some common ground
here.

On Wed, 2006-04-05 at 16:13 -0700, Corey Burger wrote:

{snip}

> However, I can still be embarrased about a product I feel is good but
> not great.

I still maintain that any embarassment is equally provoked by publishing
the guide online and in the distro under the authorship of the team.
However, personally I feel absolutely no embarassment, in fact I'm quite
proud of the various guides, and I think they are very high quality, due
mainly to the fact that we've had a lot broader contributions from new
parts of the community in this release cycle.

It would be wholly different if there was some idea of making money out
of the guides, marketing them, selling them on online bookstores, etc.
But, in my opinion, there should be no such idea. The service provided
would be simply limited to allowing people who read the guides and want
a copy but can't print it, or want a professionally printer copy, to
obtain one by paying the costs of production.

> > > 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.

I disagree that there is anything amateurish about the situation I have
outlined above. There is nothing inconsistent about the "official"[1]
doc team publishing their material, and an "official" book being written
by a group which is not the "official" doc team. If there were anything
inconsistent about this, I don't think the doc team can do anything
about it, because it wasn't involved in the book, but I truly believe
there is no problem here.

If there should be a problem, Canonical will identify it, and will say
"Guys, please don't use Lulu for the guides", and that will be that.
Don't forget, we need their permission for doing this sort of thing, so
they will act as the necessary control if the proposal looks like being
a problem.

To reemphasise the idea: I think it would be cool to allow users to
click on a link in the guides, and be taken to a site where they can pay
to have a professional copy produced. I don't think this should involve
us registering the book, selling it, profiting from it, or marketing it.
I think this would be cool to do for all the guides, and the (complete)
translations thereof.

Matt

[1] By the way, I always use the word "official" in inverted commas
because I hate it :) I don't intend to be disparaging about either
project. But putting the label "official" on either of them is saying
"this project is better because it has this label", that's something I
don't like.

-- 
mdke at ubuntu.com
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