Free & Non-Free Documentation

Guylhem writes "After the problems the LDP had with Debian rules, it seems clear we need an organization which would for example sort documentation between free (as "libre" or "freedom") and non free. After some discussions with people from the GNU project and the FSF, we came to the conclusion no such project already existed. I am please to announce that I am now starting the GNU Writing Movement with help from the GNU project. We will provide links to existing free documents, with a possibility to rate the documentation quality. The project is not competing with existing documentation project such as the LDP or GDP. It will complement them, both by serving somewhat as a meta-project for free software documentation, to provide help to authors willing to replace their FAQ or HOWTO will a full Guide on a specific topic, and to develop brand-new book-length material on many topics. " If you can't find a home for your documentation at an existing documentation project, and you agree with the philosophy of the GNU project, we can help you. Volunteers are welcome for the first phase of the project - cataloging existing free software documentation, rating it, and determining TODO lists for what needs to be documented.

Comments

Leave the politics out of it.

[Starship Trooper]

All this bickering over licence is ludicrously counterproductive. Licences don't sue people, people do. I hardly think the writer of a GPL piece of software would care what you do with the accompanying documentation, and it is baffling to me why the Debian nuts think documentation needs to be under its own special licence instead of using the GPL along with the software it documents. The reason I switched to open-source software was to get away from all the stupid EULA politics and policing of the traditional software world. I hate to see this pigheadedness seep into the open-source world.

Writing documentation is an incredibly difficult task, and few people do it well; to throw out an incredibly useful and well-written resource simply because of a miniscule licencing technicality is both horribly naïve and terribly anal behaviour. How does this guy think he'll be able to rewrite, say, all the Linux man pages without (a) having the original manpages as a reference and (b) quite possibly not being anywhere near as good a documentor as the original Linux Documentation Project? Open-source documentation is scarce and hard to come by as it is, why does Debian feel the need to exacerbate this shortcoming even further?

Fantastic...

[pongo000]

Now we have three open-source/free software doc projects: The featured project, LDP, and OSWG. So much wasted effort by so many people who could do God only knows what if they were to combine their talents, rather than taking their ball and running home at ever little perceived slight.

No, this isn't a troll, just an expression of frustration from someone who simply sees the fragmentation of open-source/free software as a Very Bad Thing. Those who promote this type of behavior (including the submitter) are doing a disservice to the open-source/free software community, as well as throwing up unnecessary barriers to those who would like to be part of the action but simply do not have the time or the patience to deal with all the in-fighting.

Ah, le na�vet�...

[Starship Trooper]

While I can appreciate your idealism, the "outdated" corporate model has proven to make money now. Of all the open-source companies, only Redhat and Apple are making a profit; Redhat by essentially having a monopoly on enterprise-level service and support for Linux, and Apple by receiving the majority of their profits from hardware. Free software will still be around, yes, but it will no longer be able to improve at the exponential rate it has been without corporate backing and most importantly money going into it. The Gordian knot of licencing in the free software world only serves to stroke the egos of RMS and the other zealots, while chasing away the money and support that could help bring their vision of "world domination" to life. People have been predicting the death of Microsoft and closed-source software since the inception of the GNU project, and yet their business model still is firmly entrenched because it works.

Re:Ah, le na�vet�...

[Starship Trooper]

Above all, it has proven that you can burn through investor money in record time. Besides, who cares about money? The very existence of free software proves that quality can be produced without monetary incentives.

Yes, poorly-documented, half-finished, unorganised quality.

You don't need money to induce people to do what they want to do anyway.

But what of the grunt-work programming people don't want to do anyway? The most successful open-source projects are those that are interesting to work on -- Linux and FreeBSD are successful because hackers like working on operating systems, Crystal Space the 3D engine is successful because the engine is fun to work with. Your average free-software hacker, however, has several deficiencies: a lack of artistic talent among them. Why else do KDE and GNOME look more or less like wholesale ripoffs of CDE, Windows, and MacOS? Why are there no free *games* written on top of the Crystal Space engine? Hackers like to just hack -- they don't like to design or plan, preferring to "evolve" the software. While this is excellent for the kernel and other low-level programming, graphical interfaces and graphical programs need design, and this design generally requires billions of dollars worth of research and development work to develop.

Apple has it right -- open-source the plumbing of the operating system, the stuff that's available for free anyway, and keep the highly-developed GUI stuff proprietary. This synergy between the open and closed worlds is the best model I can think of. Free software needs somebody to feed design and R&D money into it because the hackers won't do that "boring" stuff for free.