Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Jim Campbell]

Hi Phil,

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 4:42 AM, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 <https://launchpad.net/%7Ephilbull>
> Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm
>

That's a good point. And as I thought about it more last night, we couldn't
rule out a chance that the docs would be rewritten by someone else, and then
merged into trunk sooner rather than later (i.e., even before a change in
license).  This would only make the feeling / situation that you describe
worse.

Probably not much point in going that route, then.

Jim
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