documenting how to get source code in ubuntu-doc

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Kyle Nitzsche
<kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com> wrote:
> Matthew East wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Kyle Nitzsche
>> <kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I am putting together a modification of ubuntu-docs that will explain a
>>> bit
>>> more about how to get source code.  While not applicable to some/most
>>> users,
>>> it is probably important to include it as an aspect of Ubuntu's
>>> commitment
>>> to open source. (At any rate, we in the OEM group would very much like to
>>> add it.)
>>>
>>
>> Sorry for the slow response and thanks for reminding me about the
>> thread. I don't have a strong view on this but my instinctive reaction
>> is that this information should probably be on the Ubuntu website,
>> with a link to it inserted in the About Ubuntu document, rather than
>> the material being included in the ubuntu-docs package.
>>
>> How do you feel about that? Do you have strong reasons to include the
>> information on-disk?
>>
>
> The open-source, community-developed nature of ubuntu is supported and even
> proved by providing simple instructions within ubuntu for getting source for
> particular packages and for the whole image.
>
> Whereas pointing users to an external website is a level of indirection that
> seems inappropriate (to me) for such a core aspect of the project and its
> culture.
>
> So why not, as long as it is 1) brief and 2) unobtrusive?

Sorry for the delay in responding and thanks for reminding me about this thread.

I don't really agree with you. I think the website is the perfect
place for this type of information. It's the place where we currently
provide information about Ubuntu's philosophy, community and features.
The free nature of Ubuntu software is explored in detail there. It's
also the place where people find the information on how and where to
download Ubuntu. By contrast in the desktop help system we provide
help on how to use the software that comes with Ubuntu and I don't
think that downloading the source code is something that Ubuntu users
will usually want to do. It's more something that developers will want
to do, and we don't cover that aspect in the help system.

Having said that I don't really want to make a big discussion out of
this item. If having considered the above you are still keen to
include this somewhere, let's include it. However, I'd like to find a
better way to do it than the one currently used because, as you noted
yourself, it looks odd to have a list of links in the advanced-topics
document and then a section underneath. The obvious solution is to
create a whole new document for this subject, but that seems to me to
be overkill. The best solution for me would be to include this
material as a subsection somewhere in about-ubuntu, which is the only
document which isn't actually about desktop help (indeed that's why in
the past there has been discussion about the fact that about-ubuntu
should really be removed in favour of the website).

Let me know your thoughts.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF