Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)

I really like the sound of this.  Making the more proprietary stuff into an SEP 
(=Somebody Else's Problem) while still providing contributor-friendly 
documentation would be an ideal way to go.

There have recently been a spate of OpenSource projects being subverted but 
almost each time the community has forked away and gained independence.
OpenSolaris moved to OpenIndiana, latest release 17th December 2010
http://openindiana.org/latest-news/
VirtualBox seems to continue to be OpenSource despite Oracle's take-over
http://forums.virtualbox.org/
OpenOffice has moved to LibreOffice run by  "The Document Foundation" which has 
extremely active mailing lists
http://www.documentfoundation.org/
Their 3rd release was issued yesterday.

A centralised place for documentation covering all the different distros  
(eventually)  might help us keep documentation safe.  Pages such as; 

http://www.documentfoundation.org/HelpIndex
http://www.documentfoundation.org/DualBoot
http://www.documentfoundation.org/LiveCd
http://www.documentfoundation.org/BinaryDriver
http://www.documentfoundation.org/WindowsEmulators
http://www.documentfoundation.org/ThunderBird
http://www.documentfoundation.org/FireFox
and sub-pages such as 
http://www.documentfoundation.org/FireFox/Ubuntu
to show screen-shots and differences from vanilla FireFox if likely to be 
required by weeu (wide eyed end-users) and/or noobs.

The Document Foundation might not be able to help in this way but it has the 
advantage of being an existing organisation with a wide range of organisations 
and individuals supporting it.

Perhaps even better would be to move to linux.org which uses "The Linux 
Documentation Project" pages but presents them much more elegantly
http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/index.html
or perhaps 
http://www.linuxdocs.org/
or even 
http://www.linuxquestions.org

Both these last 3 look quite old and difficult to navigate and we could 
definitely help them re-vamp if both 'sides' were willing.  Looking at 

http://wiki.tldp.org/RecentChanges
we can see that the project is still active and being updated.  My preference 
would be to try to use "The Document Foundation" because it manages to avoid 
having the word linux in the title but i would have to say that it is generally 
better to use existing resources rather than creating a new one.  Great 
achievements are more usually achieved by "standing on the shoulders of Giants" 
as Newton (or was it Einstein) 'famously' said.

I really like the way the Community Documentation is laid out despite the 
flaws.  I like the way people are freely able to make significant contributions 
without necessarily being forced into joining a team.  A lot of us enjoy the 
benefits of having OCD or Asperger's 'Disorder' or have low self-esteem or lean 
towards "House MD" way of thinking and find it difficult to negotiate with 
'superiors' or even peers assertively (rather than passive-aggressive and/or 
being manipulative).  The Community Documentation allows us to contribute and 
help over-see each other's work to prevent pages getting subverted.  A good 
win-win.

The questions i have are
1. Would now be a good time to move/fork our various types of documentation to 
elsewhere?  

2. If so, would we want to move/fork to an existing documentation project?
3. Would we want or need Cannonical's support for such a move?

Personally i would take the ostrich route.  I do believe that any move towards 
making documentation proprietary in any way would only be a temporary move but i 
can imagine that lasting tooo long for most of us.

Regards from
Tom :)






________________________________
From: Jim Campbell <jwcampbell at gmail.com>
To: Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com>
Cc: Ubuntu Doc <ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Thu, 23 December, 2010 5:23:33
Subject: Re: Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

Hi All,


On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 2:07 AM, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:

Hi Phil,
>
>
>On 19 December 2010 22:06, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of this, I think it's time we discussed the direction of the
>> Ubuntu system docs. The package is becoming outdated - we've mostly been
>> in maintenance mode for the last few release cycles, and even that's
>> only due to the hard work and dedication of a couple of people. There
>> are a number of changes in Ubuntu and related projects that we're going
>> to have to adapt to and make some decisions about if we're to stay
>> relevant:
>
>I have to say that I can't really think of a good solution in order to
>make ubuntu-docs relevant again. The options seem to be:
>
>1. continue with the ubuntu-docs package, but rewrite the documents so
>that they match Ubuntu's default desktop setup, with Unity.
>2. seek to come closer to Gnome by shipping a modified gnome-user-docs
>package with documents added and amendments to the default documents
>to reflect maintained by us in Mallard.
>3. work on documentation to be shipped directly in the unity packages.
>
>

Thanks for summarizing this, Matthew. I think you helped to clarify our options.

There might be an additional option of writing Unity specific docs that aren't 
intended for trunk, too.  While this may not be ideal, wouldn't it be feasible 
to have an external dependency on a unity-docs package?  If Unity is used by an 
upsteam project, would it be difficult for them to grab unity and unity-docs? I 
think both options are serviceable.

I suggest this because I think it would be good to provide complete user help, 
but I don't see people running to sign this agreement and contribute docs to 
trunk.

There is the concern about the docs needing to be rewritten if Unity is ever 
re-licensed, but isn't that the problem of whoever has to rewrite the docs?  It 
would seem that it would be *their* time that is wasted, not our time. Our docs 
would still benefit users while the software is open-source.  Someone else would 
have to rewrite docs if the app is ever made proprietary. That becomes their 
problem.

Anyway, I know it's a moot point, but the contributor agreement requirement 
seems a bit silly to me for docs. Even in a worst-case scenario where Unity is 
made proprietary, is it really a problem if the docs are licensed as they are?  
That is just my opinion, though, and I know it wouldn't really factor in to 
someone's business decision. Whoever wants to own something like that probably 
wouldn't want to worry about different parts that are included / not included.

Jim


      
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