Documentation Rifts and Rebuttals

[Benjamin Humphrey]

There is no formal approval process for projects - as part of the nature of
open source, anybody can start a project and create something with the hope
of it being considered for inclusion in main. "Official" status is
meaningless, it is like getting the blessing from your preist, kind of nice
and shows all the other people in the community that you "really believe",
but doesn't confer that much.

The Ubuntu docs team are no more "official" then the manual project and 99%
of all other projects that make up Ubuntu, and I honestly couldn't care less
if the docs team "approve" of the manual project or not. The Ubuntu docs
team and the Manual Project are completely unaffiliated. All I did
originally was offer an opportunity for collaboration between the two
projects.

Thomas, I highly doubt that the entire community will be "derailed" over
this. As for your gripe about the mailing list - where else do you suppose
discussion takes place? Isn't that what mailing lists are for?

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Thomas R. Jones <
thomas.jones at maitreyasecurity.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I am writing to address an on-going issue within this mailinglist. It
> has become blazingly obvious that there is a rift among members of this
> project with regards to the "Ubuntu Manual".
>
> I have my own opinion about this project---but rather refrain from
> proceeding into discourse about those opinions because I feel that there
> is no point at this time.
>
> I, for one, do not have the time to waste following meaningless banter
> back and forth with regards to the "Ubuntu Manual" project. I have been
> a documentation member of both Redhat and openSUSE/Novell. I know from
> experience that with any given commercially supported project such as
> Ubuntu/Canonical there is a process by which certain projects are either
> accepted or denied. There is a formal approval process. There is a
> formal team, usually composed of salaried employees of the supporting
> corporation, and outstanding contributors from the open source
> community.
>
> Obviously, I am a new member to the Ubuntu Doc project(s); but i would
> like for someone to stand up and make a decision so that we can get back
> to doing something worth while rather than wasting time and effort on
> this nonsense.
>
> As a member of the open source community, I humbly request that whomever
> is charged with the responsibility of the Ubuntu Doc project needs to
> obtain some order before things get completely out of hand.
>
> I have authored some 1,000+ proprietary XML documents for the Novell
> documentation team. I have authored many of the security docs for the
> fedora distribution. I have already developed some 32,000+ vulnerability
> definitions for Ubuntu and it's derivatives that are waiting
> transmission to NIST. I am a seasoned author and contributor to many
> open source projects. I do not need rebuttals or statements validating a
> certain posture for the "Ubuntu Manual" project. I just want to see this
> rift ended before the entire community is derailed; accept the project
> or deny the project. Fork from the official project or merge. Either
> way...just get it done.
>
> Sincerely,
> Thomas Jones
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-doc mailing list
> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
>



-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz
www.benjaminhumphreyphotography.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/attachments/20100114/2b0a7bd8/attachment.html>