[Fwd: Re: the System/Help menu]

[Matthew East]

Mark asked me to forward this to the team.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com>
> To: mdke at ubuntu.com
> Cc: mdz at ubuntu.com, jane.silber at ubuntu.com
> Subject: Re: the System/Help menu
> Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 19:26:49 +0100
> 
> Matt (and by extension the doc-team)
> 
> I'm sorry that this has blown up into a dispute - especially since I
> have been very proud of the way the doc team has shaped its efforts
> into something really useful and usable. The emphasis on quality and
> translation in the team's work is truly "dapper" and "ubuntu". So I
> really, really don't want to be causing distress for that team.
> 
> In order to give voice to the other side of this discussion I think
> it's important to recognise a number of things:
> 
>  1. Open Content licences are important. They have as much potential
> to change the world as free software licences. We have worked pretty
> hard to get this content licensed freely. We wanted to go further and
> have the whole book included as a PDF so that people could choose to
> read it electronically, or get the printed version. But that proved
> too far for the publisher (it's their work after all) and this is the
> best we could get for Dapper.
> 
>  2. Books are different to documentation. There is a different use
> case, a different style, a different form of presentation. Some people
> prefer books, some prefer documentation, and some are smart enough to
> use both under different circumstances. I think the Guide's that your
> team has done are awesome, and very useful for solving particular
> problems. But I also think that some people will very much like the
> idea of having access electronically to the book content. We should
> respect that difference. You're coming from one perspective -
> recognise that there are people out there who come from a different
> one.
> 
>  3. This is an opportunity to set a trend. I absolutely believe that
> mixing software and content is going to be a vital part of what we do
> over the next few years. Let's start now. It's not perfect, but I am
> willing to bet that in a year or two this will be a standard practise
> amongst the distributions. Let's be the first. We won't get everything
> sorted out (we dont have the whole book!) but we will have enough to
> show an interesting new approach.
> 
> I conceived the new Help menu as a general interface to information
> both on-disk and on-line. The book is very much part of that vision. I
> should have done a better job of communicating that this was the plan,
> but it really has been for months and we've only just got permission
> (after a long series of discussions involving everyone from the
> authors and the publishers and ourselves and even Cory Doctorow) to
> include this particular extract.
> 
> The full content of the book will be under an open content licence
> within some months of the release, and at that point we will be able
> to make it a complete inclusion with a straightforward package update.
> I do not think that example content is an appropriate use of the work.
> It is not demonstrating the HTML publishing prowess of Dapper. It is
> real, meaningful and helpful content that will appeal to people who
> want a book style resource.
> 
> Can I ask you to forward this to the relevant members of the doc team?
> 
> Mark
-- 
mdke at ubuntu.com
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
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