Slashdot Mirror

Say hello to David Smatlak, who works with Write the Docs -- a group that started some years back as Read the Docs.They have conferences in the U.S.and Europe, and Meetups in over a dozen cities. It's a low-key group, open to both people who write documentation and developers who want help writing professeional-quality documentation for their Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Also welcome are those who would like to learn how to write good software documentation, starting with this online tutorial about the art and science of writing technical documentation. (And if you are interested primarily in Linux documentation, you'll want to check the Linux Documentation Project, too.)

First time accepted submitter TWX writes I've been out of computers as a serious home-hobby for many years and in returning I'm aghast at the state of documentation for Open Source projects. The software itself has changed significantly in the last decade, but the documentation has failed to keep pace; most of what I'm finding applies to versions long since passed or were the exact same documents from when I dropped-out of hobbyist computing years ago. Take Lightdm on Ubuntu 14.04 for example- its entire configuration file structure has been revamped, but none of the documentation for more specialized or advanced uses of Lightdm in previous versions of Ubuntu has been updated for this latest release. It's actually harder now to configure some features than it was a decade ago. TLDP is close to a decade out-of-date, fragmentation between distributions has grown to the point that answers from one distro won't readily apply to another, and web forums for even specific projects are full of questions without answers, or those that head off into completely unrelated discussion, or with snarky, "it's in the documentation, stupid!" responses. Where do you go for your FOSS documentation and self-help?

twilight30 asks: "While trying to figure out why a supposedly-supported SATA-II controller isn't recognized on my motherboard I thought I'd go back and visit the Linux Documentation Project's pages. It was a trip down memory lane, but I soon wondered about the state of many of the documents there. Much of TLDP is old, maybe even crufty. So, I'd like to ask what you think of TLDP.org and its 'competitors'. Do people get info from other sites or Wikis? Are people more likely to look at their distro's forums first? Are distros good enough now that TLDP is basically irrelevant? For the BSDheads, do you think the BSDs' documentation pages have lessons to teach TLDP? Is TLDP still relevant to you? If not, what would have to change for TLDP to become relevant again?"

avibrazil writes "A new Linux Font HOWTO was published with way more practical info for modern systems. The still-useful parts of the two former Font HOWTOs from TLDP were unified in this new one, to be a definitive one-stop-shop for Linux font solutions."

avibrazil writes "A new Linux Font HOWTO was published with way more practical info for modern systems. The still-useful parts of the two former Font HOWTOs from TLDP were unified in this new one, to be a definitive one-stop-shop for Linux font solutions."

avibrazil writes "A new Linux Font HOWTO was published with way more practical info for modern systems. The still-useful parts of the two former Font HOWTOs from TLDP were unified in this new one, to be a definitive one-stop-shop for Linux font solutions."

Saqib Ali asks: "Apple, publishes the Apple Publications Style Guide, which codifies the way in which Apple documentation uses language. This publication contains information about the specific terms that are used to describe interface elements. It also defines style and usage issues such as how certain terms are used and the preferred capitalization, spelling, and hyphenation of those terms. Some parts of the style guide are excerpted in this chapter to provide quick reference for key elements of the user interface. Whenever you are constructing a language for your application, you can consult the Apple Publications Style Guide to help you to create consistent and usable one. Is there a similar Style Guide for Linux Publications? If not, why not?"

"My interest in this stems from the fact that there is lot of Linux Documentation (including mine) that are not consistent in the style and terminology. So, I would like to propose a creation of a Style Guide for Linux Technical Publication. I think a wiki would be the perfect tool to create this Guide collaboratively. I am willing to host a Wiki @ http://tools.tldp.org (The Linux Documentation Project development server). Is this a good idea? Are people interested in seeing something of this sort?"

Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"

Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"

Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"

Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"

Saqib Ali asks: "A DTD (Documentation Type Definition) defines the document structure with a list of legal elements. DocBook DTD is being widely used in creating Linux related documentation. However I am looking for a XML DTD that is more suited to internal IT documentation, and easy to learn and use. Preferably I would like to use a DTD that can be used with OpenOffice. What DTDs are other Slashdot readers using for for internal IT documentation? I have created documentation using DocBook DTD and hosted them on a Apache Cocoon . Cocoon lets me transform the XML to HTML or PDF. I would like to keep the same backend infrastructure (i.e. Cocoon) but try out other DTDs that are suited for IT related documentation. Any ideas?"

hta writes: "The Linux Documentation Project is happy to announce its 10-year anniversary! Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation. Matt Welsh decided to do something about this, and wrote the first Linux HOWTO - the 'Installation HOWTO' - the first of what is now a huge collection of focused, solution-oriented documents. It became a movement just like Linux itself. More and more people joined in on the effort, tools were created, and documents were written, translated and published. Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly."

"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.

TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.

TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."

hta writes: "The Linux Documentation Project is happy to announce its 10-year anniversary! Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation. Matt Welsh decided to do something about this, and wrote the first Linux HOWTO - the 'Installation HOWTO' - the first of what is now a huge collection of focused, solution-oriented documents. It became a movement just like Linux itself. More and more people joined in on the effort, tools were created, and documents were written, translated and published. Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly."

"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.

TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.

TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."

hta writes: "The Linux Documentation Project is happy to announce its 10-year anniversary! Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation. Matt Welsh decided to do something about this, and wrote the first Linux HOWTO - the 'Installation HOWTO' - the first of what is now a huge collection of focused, solution-oriented documents. It became a movement just like Linux itself. More and more people joined in on the effort, tools were created, and documents were written, translated and published. Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly."

"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.

TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.

TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."

Dishwasha asks: "For the past several months I have spent an inordinate amount of time wrestling with video conferencing. The compatibility issues between different video conferencing equipment and network hardware are enough to make a seasoned network administrator pull their hair out. When it comes down to it, there's not a lot of good documentation on how to actually implement video conferencing. I'd like to help other people save time by sharing my experiences, but I don't have the time or resources to maintain what would ultimately be just a few unorganized web pages. Has anybody set up a website and/or forum for submitting general HOWTO's? I'd envision something similar to Linuxdoc but categorized by technology and moderated."

rjnagle writes "The availability of HOW-TOs and newsgroups is supposed to make the sysadmin's job easier, right? Much as I am a proponent of the 'distributed learning model' for Linux, the endless searching for answers on the Web for setting up Linux RAID was getting to be a royal pain. Sure, there was a RAID how-to and an excellent newgroup, but some of the information is out of date, and the tricks suggested by people a year ago may be no longer needed today. Robert reviews the O'Reilly title Managing RAID on Linux below to see how it stacks up to HOWTOs, guesswork and anecdotal evidence. Managing RAID on Linux author Derek Vadala pages 245 publisher O'Reilly rating The best reviewer Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) ISBN 1565927303 summary This book brings RAID to the masses

A person deciding to go with RAID faces a panoply of options and gotchas. Hardware or software? How many controllers? ATA or SCSI (or ataraid)? RAID 1 or RAID 5? Which file system or distribution? Kernel options? Mdadm or raidtools? /swap or /boot on raid? Hybrid? Left or right symmetric? One poster pointed out that putting two ATA drives on the same controller could impact performance. Yikes! Didn't I do that? Upon discovering that O'Reilly had just published its Managing RAID on Linux book, looking at sample chapter , I bought the book and let my blood pressure return to normal.

RAID is one of these subjects that is really not complex; it's just very hard to find all the information in one place. This is precisely the book to solve the problem. Author Derek Vadala, sysadmin and founder of Azurance.com, an open source/security consulting firm, has gathered a lot of information and even personal anecdotes to go through the decision making process when going over to RAID. He goes step-by-step through that process, educating us about hard drives, controllers, and bottlenecks along the way. This exhaustive book may be the first to bring RAID to the masses.

Although parts of the book (RAID types, file system types) may seem already familiar to experienced Linux users, it is helpful nonetheless to have everything in a nifty little book. A section of file systems provided not only a rundown of the merits and drawbacks of each one, but also a guide to their utilities. I learned for example what "file tails" for Reiser are, and why using them causes performance to degrade after reaching 85% capacity. The book compares raidtools with mdadm as well as lovely commands like nohup mdadm -monitor -mail=paranoidsysadmin@home.com (which, if you haven't guessed, causes the system to email you RAID status reports upon boot).

People who use software RAID may skip over the chapter on RAID utilities for the leading RAID controller cards. Still, there was one interesting tidbit: Why, the author asks, do makers of controller cards put all their BIOS utilities on DOS floppies which require us to find a DOS boot disk? Seriously, how many of us carry around DOS boot disks nowadays? The book made me aware for the first time of freedos, an open source solution that solves precisely that problem.

The Software RAID stuff was pretty thorough and clarified a lot of things. The book does an excellent job in helping to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and optimizing hard drive performance (using hdparm and various monitoring commands). The anecdotes and case studies definitely clarified which RAID solution is suited for which task.

I am less impressed by the book's sections on disaster recovery and troubleshooting. Although these subjects are brought up at several places in the software RAID chapter, the book could have discussed several failure scenarios or used a fault tree (such as the famous Fault Tree in Chapter 9 of the Samba book, a marvel for any tech writer to read). The book doesn't even discuss booting with software RAID until the last 10 page of the book and then gives it only a single paragraph (even though the author acknowledges it as "one of the most frequently asked questions on the linux-raid mailing list."). Call me old-fashioned, but isn't the ability to boot into your RAID system ... kinda important? As someone who just spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting RAID booting problems in Gentoo, I for one would have liked more insight into the grub/lilo thing. Also, in the next paragraph in the last chapter on page 228, the author casually mentions that "all /boot and / partitions must be on a RAID-1." Say what? Please pity the poor newbie who religiously follows the instructions in the book but fails to read until the end. I'm not sure what the author meant by this statement, but it required a much more substantial explanation and needed to go into a much earlier chapter.

These complaints don't detract very much from this excellent book, a true O'Reilly classic and a model of clarity and helpfulness. This book provides enough knowledge to avoid the dread and uncertainty that comes with trying to tackle Linux RAID. With a book like this, a sysadmin can sleep a little easier.

Recommended Readings:

• Reliable Linux , by Iaian Campbell, Wiley and Sons, Dec 2001, ISBN: 0471070408. Gives excellent information not only about RAID but on general Linux reliability issues.
  
• Software RAID in the Linux 2.4 Kernel by Daniel Robbins. (Part Two).
  
• Linux Journal Article on Software RAID by Joe Edwards, Audin Malmin and Ron Shaker. ( Part Two).
  
• "How to do a gentoo install on software RAID" by Chris Atwood. Gentoo User Forum.

Robert Nagle (aka Idiotprogrammer )is a Texas technical writer, trainer and Linux aficionado. You can purchase Managing RAID on Linux from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Okay, here are answers from Paul Jones, director of ibiblio.org. You asked, and he responded -- and not always as seriously as you'd expect from someone who can ask us to call him "Professor Jones" or "Doctor Jones." But he's really "Just Paul," he says, "even in class." We hope a whole lot of you have a chance to meet Paul in person one day, because he's not only a warm and friendly guy, but one who has done a whole lot of good for Linux -- and for the Internet in general.

Paul:
Let me start out with a little overview of sunsite.unc.edu/metalab.unc.edu. Or better yet to point you to our annotated timeline. Then say that ibiblio.org began and has continued to be a way for the University of North Carolina (the original and still the best) to explore information sharing in the context of our missions of education, research and outreach. You folks using and contributing are the outreach part. In particular, we "acquire, discover, preserve, synthesize, and transmit knowledge" with all of your help.

We are a joint project of the School of Information and Library Science (there we are involved in digital archives and digital libraries), The School of Journalism and Mass Communication (there we are involved in electronic publishing and multimedia sharing), and the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology.

Except for one and occasionally two full time employees, our entire staff consists of students or in my case part time (as I have faculty responsibilities). So be nice to all of us, we're always learning. No matter what Robin said in the article introducing me, none of this would have happened without some very good people on staff and contributing content.

But that brings us to:

Question of Money
by too_bad
One of the things that people frequently ask about sites like ibiblio.org is "They are great. But how long will they be around?" Do you see this as a concern (esp. after the LWN announcement) and do you have any comments regarding this. Are there any good approaches you suggest (like augmenting free usership with voluntary subscriptions, etc) for such free sites in general?

Paul:
We have been very lucky, since our beginning, to have generous and understanding support from The University of North Carolina and from sponsors large and small including Sun, IBM, Red Hat, VA Linux^h^h^h^h^hSoftware, Mandrake, Cisco and others.

We also do get some research contracts and grants, but most importantly for us in the past two years has been a large gift from the founders of Red Hat and the Center for the Public Domain.

We have some top secret international funding sources as well. At the moment, we actually have a small endowment that if spent wisely should last several years. It is my hope that we will never have to charge the patrons of our digital archives.

BUT this brings me to my favorite question, which only got a rating of 4:

Donations?
by Anonymous Coward
Where do I send the cheque?

Paul:
Send your or your organization's tax-deductible contributions to:

Ibiblio.org
Campus Box 3456
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3456

Moving on to:

Typical Questions
by suwain_2
I've downloaded my share of things, and find that the 3 Mbps cap on my cable modem is almost always my bottleneck. So my question is fairly simple (albeit broad) -- can you describe your setup a bit, in terms of bandwidth (both what you have for an Internet connection, and how much traffic you actually use), servers, storage (I'd venture to guess it's to the tune of several terabytes?), etc.

Paul:
We're on UNC's network. Our connections to the commodity and Internet2 networks are served by UNC's OC-48 network connection. We maintain a constant throughput of network traffic outbound in the 160-180Mbits/sec range.

Our current main servers were donated by IBM and serve content from a central fileserver with 2TB of disk attached. In our racks, we have approximately 5TB of space (with system disks, Sourceforge and an Internet2/Distributed Storage Initiative node). We do some load balancing between streaming services, web services, and large downloads like distros. On a typical day, we move over 1.5 terabytes of data off our servers. (Thanks to Fred Stutzman for much of this info.)

Backups
by Chris Pimlott
What's your backup strategy? I imagine it's hard to deal with both so much data as well as being under constant bombardment from clients around the world. How often is data archived? Have you had any major data loss incidents and, if so, how well were you able to deal with them?

Paul:
Like everyone else we rely on Archive.org, but seriously... (Fred answers this since he did the restore).

We run managed backups on UNC's enterprise storage facilities. We run them every night and have incremental backups for three months. UNC uses StorageTek machines and Tivoli Distributed Storage Manager for enterprise backups. We have had major data loss incidents, in which a raid card failed and lost the array's configuration. One of the disks in the array died simultaneously, we were unable to re-import the configuration to the new card, so we had to restore from backup, which took a number of days.

I, Paul, can only say that in the past things were much worse and we did have one famous meltdown in 1995 that was not pretty. Since then the UNC enterprise backup has been our friend - and for the most part disks and RAID arrays have been increasingly more reliable.

What's your biggest area?
by Otter
I know ibiblio (I still think of it as SunSite) as a) a repository of Unix software, especially useful for pre-Freshmeat apps and b) a mirror provider. "Free online publisher" wouldn't have made the list, but looking at your main page I see all sorts of things I didn't realize you hosted. Which ones get the most traffic?

Paul:
For sheer bytes, ISOs rule. But then it doesn't take too many downloads to get a lot of bytes for an ISO. Source-based distros like Gentoo have seen a lot of activity lately.

One of our most visited sites is also one of our oldest, Nicholas Pioch's WebMuseum (originally WebLouvre). An amusing reason may be that, as Nicolas writes:

"I've just found out that Microsoft Encarta Deluxe 2001 (the copy I just happened to find out and install) has direct links ('Web Links') from each artist's article to the webmuseum (on metalab.unc.edu at the time) and that's actually the only weblink provided in that 2001 edition."

Among other favorites are:

• The Linux Documention Project, which began on sunsite
• Documenting the American South
• Hong Kong Picture Archive
• Henriette's Herbal Homepage
• Hyperwar A hypertext history of the Second World War

What about content producers?
by Fluid Donkey
In general how supportive have you found the producers of such content to be of your services? Do many if any really believe that something like this will cause them to starve to death?

Paul:
First, they are all with us voluntarily and can leave any time, taking their stuff with them. That alone pretty much says that they believe in what we are helping them do.

I should say also that not all material is copyleft. But all of it is free to view, listen to and to reference. We are working with Creative Commons, which we also host, to develop a small but viable set of licenses for folks including our contributors who want to share their work on various terms (attribution, home or personal use, educational use, etc).

One important contributor, Roger McGuinn, has been making one folk song a month available for download since November 1995 on his Folk Den. He also sells CDs and performs concerts. He seems to be doing pretty well. Many contributors are scholars or students who understand the importance of sharing information.

Dave Farley, who does the wonderful Dr Fun, has a book contract with Plan 9, and we're looking forward to seeing what we've seen in electrons in print.

Relative importance of different material?
by kafka93
What is the center's view on the publishing of material that might be considered "offensive" or "dangerous", and does the center make subjective judgements upon the importance of one piece of intellectual property over another on the basis of 'artistic worth', 'decency', etc.? With only limited resources available to promote the archiving of data, is there the risk that important fringe documents may be left by the wayside, or ignored due to political/social concerns?

Paul:
Like non-digital archives and libraries, we have a Collection Policy. You'll note that we do not explicitly ban materials for content nor do we plan to. We do not maintain materials that are illegal, slanderous, libelous, or otherwise prohibited by law. Ultimately the contributors are responsible for their content and we do not review the content once a project is taken on.

Most rejections of content come about because the content is too commercial, just personal, or relies on advertising.

Metadata and easy searching
by RyanMuldoon
iBiblio stands out as an excellent repository for a wide range of culturally valuable resources. As it and other sites grow in size, the importance of good searching and indexing becomes extremely relevant. Have you given any thought to how you might want to cope with this? Specifically, are there any metadata schemata that you are considering using? I would love to see iBiblio be used more like a content feed to research/cross-referencing applications.

Paul:
Interesting that you asked about this as this is an area that we've been working in for the past couple of years. Actually we go way back to pre-Web metadata to the Internet Anonymous FTP Archive (IAFA) files which were the model for the Linux Software Map (LSM). Thanks to Jonathan Magid for this innovation and for suggesting that we host Linux in the very beginning.

When we designed our contributor-maintained Collection Index, we designed it to create and display metadata that could be shared via the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). Please note that this metadata is at the collection level - not at the item level. Item level metadata is for future work. Also since you asked: Miles Efron and I will be presenting a paper at the Digital Resource in the Humanities conference in September on the Problem of Access in Contributor-Run Digital Libraries. Serena Fenton is co-author to this paper.

On the Linux Documentation Project front, we worked with several others to create the Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF).

The OMF aims to collect data about Open Source documentation, or metadata, that will be used to describe the documentation. The idea is that the OMF will act as a sophisticated card catalog type of system for the numerous Open Source documentation projects that exist. The OMF offers a number of advantages over standard card catalog type systems, however. Chief among these is the fact that the OMF has been designed from the ground up to be completely open, standards based, and sharable. We will accomplish this by using pre-defined standards (XML and the Dublin Core description for metadata) and allowing all metadata generated to be accessed by anyone that wants it. Because the metadata itself is to be stored in XML files, anyone should be able to use it.

OMF support is included in the Scrollkeeper project. Note that none of these metadata designs are overly complex. That is by design. The idea is to keep the metadata simple enough to be understood by the creator of the digital item or collection that it describes. If I could make one strong point about metadata design it is that simplicity is the key - and the hardest thing to pull off.

Trust metric and online publishing
by Creosote
I heard you talk at the Southern Presses conference last year about the use of trust metrics (like Slashdot's karma and Advogato's peer certification) as a possible alternative to the "top-down" means of filtering that scholarly and commercial publishers use, namely formal peer review and mass marketing, respectively. Are you more or less optimistic about the long-term viability of this model then you were then? (Especially in light of the powerful efforts to keep control of the gates we're seeing these days from Hollywood, the recording industry, and their political allies...)

Paul:
Beginning here I am speaking personally and not on behalf of ibiblio.org or any of its sponsors or supporters including but not limited to the University of North Carolina.

The Blog is one example of creator-empowerment that has gotten more attention since that talk and I think there will be plenty more examples to come. I still believe that people in constant communications will result in "Smart Mobs" (thank you, Howard Rheingold, for naming and noticing and writing on this). This is not just about music or movies or about one country or even one age group. While I don't think that we will completely replace our reliance, however reluctant, on Mickey Mouse, I do think that we are entering a time in which there are new opportunities for us to share information and to work together. The slew of misguided efforts by media and information cartels, especially the RIAA, which demonize their customers and clients, will make things tough but they also are signs that the old solutions are not working well and that newer, and I hope more inclusive and more open, solutions are on the horizon.

GeekPAC and "When Congress Attacks"
by lunenburg
I noticed that you are one of the founders of the American Open Technology Consortium and/or GeekPAC - the lobbying group that got a bit of fanfare a few months back when it was formed, but has been pretty quiet since then. With Congress launching seemingly daily attacks on our technological freedom in order to support the revenue models of a few huge businesses, the need for a voice in Washington is growing urgent. Is the AOTC/GeekPAC working to get our voices heard? Is there a need for an umbrella group to tie together various groups like GeekPAC, Public Knowledge, Digital Consumer, etc.?

Paul:
Yes, (again speaking only as Paul) I am an officer of the American Open Technology Consortium (AOTC). But for various complex reasons, I am not a member of GeekPAC. As you might have guessed, getting these projects going has been no simple matter. Jeff Gerhard has been doing a wonderful job of making sure the legal and procedural steps are properly taken. So far, what you are seeing is some very motivated but very busy people learning how to work together to get the projects off the ground. The good news is that folks like Jeff, Doc Searles and others on the boards are smart, dedicated and experienced people who can and will play well with others (including Public Knowledge and Digital Consumer and EFF). We hope to represent slightly different voices than those already represented. If you are reading this, you know who you are and we need your help.

About the umbrella group, I think that a summit conference (or at least a summit listserv) would make more sense. This kind of looser structure, often called an Action Committee or Organizing Committee, has been very successfully used by both ends of the political spectrum in the past half century.

Two words...
by Anonymous Coward
DRM? Palladium?

What's your take on these two technologies?

Are you afraid they'll ultimately destroy what you have been working for, for the past 10 years? If not, why?

Optional question: What about the copyright extension we have seen?

Another optional question: Linux... or BSD? =)

Paul:
Not Linux vs BSD, but Digital Rights Management and Microsoft's Palladium. DMR is the general term for the groups of solutions to the need for creators to be compensated for their work while allowing their audience to easily access those works. Or at least that would be ideally what DRM should do.

When DRM goes wrong, it tramples on the rights of the citizens to have access to information that they have legally purchased, want to criticize, parody, legally reuse or share.

When DRM goes wrong, it creates barriers to innovation and creativity. It biases access and reproduction of information to only certain technologies.

When DRM goes wrong, it creates and perpetrates closed markets and monopolies.

When DRM goes wrong, everyone suffers. It takes us back to the Stationers Guild, a response to the printing press. "The Stationers Guild obtained monopoly rights in the printing and probably distribution of all books, a monopoly codified by the Tudors in a licensing system aimed at censoring religious dissent" which lasted until the early 1700s.

When DRM goes wrong, it is called Palladium.

The good news is that Palladium is vaporware - so far.

What is your greatest success/failure?
by burgburgburg
Simple enough question in two parts:

Looking back on 10 years of doing this, what would classify as your greatest success, and your greatest failure?

Paul:
The simplest question is the hardest, of course. Luckily, you've narrowed the success/failure question to deal only with sunsite/metalab/ibiblio and not the past 10 years of my life.

One mark of great success is that we are still here hosting some of the original collections of information to be shared on the Net including the first 7/24 radio simulcast on the net, WXYC. We've been a part of many innovations and I, personally, have been able to work with some brilliant folks who often surprised themselves with what they had accomplished. We're also funded and we enjoy support from some wonderful and diverse faculties at UNC.

There is no question in my mind that the most significant decision that I made in those ten years was to listen to Jonathan Magid when he suggested that we become the US site for an operating system that didn't even work yet - Linux. If you are reading this far and are happy, you owe Jonathan. If you are unhappy, blame me.

In research, there is no such thing as failure. As I was explaining to our Interim Vice Chancellor, we are supposed to make mistakes. As Ms. Frizzle says, "Take chances, get messy and EXPLORE! Wahoo!".

Still, I do wish that we had found a way to use WAIS or another distributed search engine in a way that is still useful. There still seems to me to be something unfinished in that area. Killing gopher. That was more fun than Wack-a-mole.

And one final answer:

Slack.
by dsb3
You host a slew of subgenius content, so it must be asked ... do you have slack?

Paul:
While I do not profess to completely comprehend slack, I have been assured by members of the Church that I do have it.

This week's Slashdot questions go to Paul Jones, director of ibiblio.org (formerly MetaLab, before that SunSITE) since it first went live in August, 1992. Ibiblio hosts the world's largest Linux archive (including the LDP), plenty of streamed and downloadable music, the world's longest-running Web cartoon (Dr. Fun), and thousands of texts on topics too numerous to list here. This is truly "the public's library and digital archive," 100% GPL, copyleft, and/or public domain, sponsored jointly by the Center for the Public Domain and UNC. Lots of people talk about free online publishing. Paul Jones just does it, day after day, year after year. Ask him whatever you want; we'll send 10 of the highest moderated questions to him and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

Guylhem writes: "The Linux Documentation Project has a new domain name. You can now find the LDP on the web at www.tldp.org This name change came about due to some difficulties with the linuxdoc domain name (see linuxdocs.org, linuxdoc.com...) : in order to have clear rights to the domain name, the LDP had to relocate its primary services site. You can still reach access the LDP by pointing your browser to www.linuxdoc.org, but you will be redirected to www.tldp.org site." A few more details below.

Linuxdoc.org will be supported for compability reasons for the next 5 years. This move may come as a surprise for many LDP faithful, but the majority of the staff believed that the change was necessary to assure that the LDP would be available for the next wave of new Linux users.

The LDP will take care of this opportunity to improve internationalization - english (en.tldp.org), french (fr.tldp.org) and brasilian (br.tldp.org) content will be online soon. We intend to share as many resources (code, cvs, systems) as possible between the different localised versions. Within the next weeks, www.tldp.org will take you to the language your browser has been configured to accept as default. Feel like a closet writer? Whatever your mother tongue is, join us now!"