Docs Team and Ubuntu Manual Project: Toward future cooperation

[Daniel Bo]

Matthew,

That was a very well-reasoned and constructive e-mail. Agreed.
Certainly, users should be able to get all official Ubuntu
documentation from a single source, and that source should be as good
as possible and serve the users. How to achieve that goal is up for
discussion, but every minute of discussion is also a minute not spent
on documentation. We need to find a balance.

I see a major problem with open source documentation in general --
that it is rarely up to date. Surely this is because the software
changes so much every release and releases are so frequent. There is a
terrible grind in researching changes, updating documentation,
preparing translations, publishing, then repeating the cycle every six
months. Editing for changes is also significantly less exciting than
writing new content. Few volunteers are that dedicated. I expect that
the Ubuntu Manual team will experience this problem within a release
or two, and bitrot will set in there, too.

That is not a knock on the Docs team (or the Manual team), which are
apparently doing their best. All I'm saying is that the limited
manpower shouldn't be wasted.