Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Phil Bull]

Hi Jim,

On Wed, 2010-12-22 at 23:23 -0600, Jim Campbell wrote:
[...]
> 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.

In terms of workload, rewriting the Unity docs to match a change in
license would certainly be someone else's (Canonical's) problem.
However, if the docs *were* rewritten, they would presumably be merged
into the main Unity package, obsoleting the community-contributed work.
If that happened, I'd feel pretty annoyed about putting a load of work
into something that turned out to be pointless.

Of course, that is just a *potential* issue. It might never happen. But
the threat is there, and that puts me off.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull
Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm