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

This first post

[Genghis Troll]

is free.

Re:This first post

[Lunastorm]

Free as in beer or free as in speech?

Re:This first post

[Anonymous Coward]

GWM = GNU Writing Movement = Gay White Male. Could they be any more obvious about it?

Re:This first post

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think its funny that "Alan Cox" is a anagram (though not very suttle) for "Anal Cox" and that Linus rimes with Penis and that "Anonymous Coward" is an anagram for "O ya - Onan cum words"

Re:This first post

[The WIPO Troll]

ISO?

Re:This first post

[Genghis Troll]

Free as in my balls. Down with boxers, a pox on briefs!

Re:This first post

[Klerck]

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First Anti-LOTR Post

[beee]

Frodo Baggins? More like Frodo FAGGINS!

fp!

[Anonymous Coward]

I roX0r, you bitchez suX0r!!

Second Derivative

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, is this just my second calculus post today? I think it is the second FIRST calculus post, today, too. Woohoo! I'm so damn sexy!

first post

[PMan88]

sorry, i just had to

Quality documentation

[spencerogden]

I think what really may be needed is for an organization, such as this one, to raise donations to hire writers to fill in the gaps in open documentation. We all know some projects are documented well others poorly, all of them could use help making the documentation make sense to newbies. This just isn't something that enough people do out of the good of their hearts. Maybe this would be a path to getting quality documentation.

Re:Quality documentation

[r2q2]

It would be xxx:the missing man pages!

Re:Quality documentation

[grammar nazi]

Finally, the grammar nazi will have a place away from Slashdot to correct grammatical mistakes!!

The grammar nazi knew all along that he would provide an important role for the free software movement. He always thought that this role was improving the grammar of the Slashdot community, but alas... now he has a chance to show his stuff to the greater free software community. Maybe he will finally get the respect that he deserves.

Today is a day of celebration!!

Re:Quality documentation

[drsquare]

I don't see how it is that difficult to competently put together documentation.

I think we should steer away from technical documentation, and start writing stuff aimed at average users, such as "Linux for Idiots" style books or "Linux for the mentally disabled".

It wouldn't be too difficult.

Re:Quality documentation

[nomadic]

Finally, the grammar nazi will have a place away from Slashdot to correct grammatical mistakes!!
Today is a day of celebration!!

One should never use two punctuation marks in a row; it's just bad grammar.

Re:Quality documentation

[glitch!]

One should never use two punctuation marks in a row; it's just bad grammar.
What the heck?! Shirley, you must be joking...

Re:Quality documentation

[spencerogden]

No one said it was difficult, its just not fun (for most people). It is especially not fun, ususally, for the very people best qualified to write it, the people who wrote the program, no one knows it better. Unfortunately, most coders aa) don't like wrting documentation and/or b) are not good at wrting it at a level appropriate for beginners.

It comes back to the revelation seen here on /. that explaining something to a newbie is harder the more of a guru you are.

Re:Quality documentation

[Guylhem]

It will take time. I would love to raise funds and distribute them to writers to help producing better documentation. This is the long term goal. Currently, we will just map what's available. Then if people are interested

We already accept donations - if you did read and enjoyed one of our documents, give a little to the LDP (contant webmaster@ibiblio.org - we receive donations through ibiblio) or the GNU project (gnu.org)

The money is spend wisely - recently we paid the shipping free to send donated books to Africa and Brasil.

Re:Quality documentation

[paulm]

The revelation was actually that explaining something to a newbie is harder the more of a "I'm such a leet guru" attitude you have. There are plenty of those around who can't help anybody because their ego gets in the way.

Re:Quality documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

... (elipses) is counted as one punctuation mark, not three. And for that matter, a long dash (--) is also counted as one.

Re:Quality documentation

[Guylhem]

"Linux for the mentally disabled" ? Defitively not politically correct but I love the name.

Man, that's going to be the title of my next document. Hey, people are *purchasing* linux for dummies, so they have no self esteem problem. That means they can as well come and read my presentation of GNU/Linux ;-)

Re:Quality documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great. On the one hand, we're already paying homage to all the idiots out there (note they don't have to make an effort to become more intelligent, someone has to make an effort to make the manuals dumber to better suit them) and on the other hand we're paying people to document programs that were intentionally written for free. Great idea.

Re:Quality documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazism was bad. Being able to use a language and spell correctly - especially in the face of automatic spell checkers - is good. In fact, submission of something incorrectly spelled is conceit and nothing else. To call someone who knows how to use the language - in contrast to you useless morons who could better study this language than hang out here at /. as you do every frikkin day of your useless lives - a Nazi - is - well, typical of you. Your grasp of history is about as crappy as what comes out of your mouths.

Re:Quality documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux for Idiots"

"Linux for the mentally disabled"

These are equivalent. But tests have already shown that one does not have to be an idiot to have difficulty with Linux. Octagenerians have a good time with Linux. They do fine. What is needed is more people who can help.

Take the crowd at /. for instance. Could you help? Hardly. You lack the social skills to do it. And you most likely lack the technical skills as well.

Otherwise you'd be somewhere else doing something productive, wouldn't you?

Coming in Webster's soon:

slashdot v. to masturbate, even to mentally masturbate with little or no brains to do it with, based on rumoured low IQ of forum founder Rob Malda and shockingly low median IQ of forum frequenters, most of which are categorised as "po white trash".

Re:Quality documentation

[grammar nazi]

The grammar nazi isn't sure how that you can understand his grasp of History, but he can assure you that you used too many hyphens in your comment. It would have been more grammatically pure to use less hyphens. We must support grammatically purity at Slashdot.

We can not have the comment species tainted with the blood of inferior grammars.

Re:Quality documentation

[Lemmy Caution]

I can't agree less. There is a lot of documentation that tells you the basics. There is little documentation - and it is damnably hard to find - to help you troubleshoot nontrivial and nonobvious problems, or to integrate components cleanly. It's the intermediate and higher user that is really getting left out in the cold - doing things like configuring useable printing systems (via cups or such), setting up fax servers, configuring vpn and tcp/ip wrappers and the like are documented poorly and inconsistently, with outdated information everywhere (frankly, I'm convinced that most of that information is spread by word of mouth, if not by simple apostolic descent.) Writing for the newbies is easy - what is difficult is teaming up someone who knows the hard stuff with someone who can document it well, since expertise usually requires abandoning the very metaphors that make assimilating difficult material possible.

Re:Quality documentation

[dinotrac]

After many years as an analyst and developer, I spent a year writing technical documentation aimed at application developers for a switching platform.

It was a revalation. A couple of thoughts:

Point one: You're right. Writing documentation is not a lot of fun.

Point two: It's a whole lot harder than you think -- at least if you care about the result. Just like programming: It's pretty easy to write lousy doco. It's hard to write good stuff.

As to the developers being most qualified to write it?

Ha!

A few actually are quite good, but most aren't. The problem isn't knowledge or even writing ability. The trouble is that developers typically see things differently from users. Things of critical importance to someone working deep in the bowels of code may not matter at all to someone who just calls it through an API or who uses the program.

These are among the reasons that high-quality documentation will tend to be in short supply unless money is paid.

There is, of course, another reason, and your post demonstrates it: developers don't seem to think that writers have any special skills and tend not to value their contribution beyond the time-saving. The people asking for help too often hold little regard for those who can offer it.

Re:Quality documentation

[Cro Magnon]

"The trouble is that developers typically see things differently from users. Things of critical importance to someone working deep in the bowels of code may not matter at all to someone who just calls it through an API or who uses the program. "

BINGO!!! A few years ago, I had to redo some really crappy documentation which, IMO, missed both target audiences. I looked at it and said "WTF! I can get this info by looking at the ***king source". My boss looked at it and said "WTF! What is this gobledy-gook!". When I rewrote it I concentrated on WHAT the program was doing, not HOW it was doing it.

Re:Quality documentation

[RagingMaen]

Show me a developer who can write quality documentation and I will show you poorly developed code. Technical writing is not something for washed out journalists, marketeers or developers.

Re:Quality documentation

[RagingMaen]

This was very common in the mid to late bloom of the dot.com era. Some companies, having little or no experiance with documentation of any sort, relied on programmers, entry-level marketeers, interns and over the hill journalists to contruct readable technical documentation. Many organizations have no clue the difference between a User Guide a User Manual a Read Me First and a Release Notes documents are - and what is the intended audience for each. Not to mention what the tranlation hassles, if your providing a product world-wide.

First Beowulf Cluster Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Neener neener weiner! look at me for i am FIRST BEOWULF CLUSTER POSTER and your MASTER!

Fix or document?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, the mess in /dev will be libre documented, but it will still be a mess.

Re:Fix or document?

[BWindle]

Actually, /dev as we know it in Linux will go away soon, most likely with 2.6, and be replaced with devfs, which promises to be much cleaner (as well as only have dev entries for hardware you actually have)

Re:Fix or document?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is appropriate to change the /dev structure at this time. While at first thought it might seem cleaner to have dev entries for only hardware that exixts in the system, it makes upgrades impractical for the average user. If we expect to overtake Micro$oft as dominators of the world, we can not expect the average joe user to know how to run mknod. Another advantage to the current /dev is that with of files it helps to make the system "scarey" to the average Joe and he is less likely to fuck around and break things. Once we make Linux as easy as Winbloze the end will be near. The advantage we have is complexity and difficulty of administration. Before the advent of the GUI it would have been nearly impossible for Joe to fuck up the network settings but now those crucial configurations are just a mouseclick away. The easier it is to use an OS the easier it is to fuck it up. I'll call this "Stability through obscurity" and bitchslap anyone who challenges me on this.

Re:Fix or document?

[MisterBlister]

Worst. Troll. Ever.

Re:Fix or document?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, with devfs the devices create their own /dev entries; Joe User doesn't have to use mknod.

Re:Fix or document?

[Anonymous Coward]

yhbt. yhl. hand.

GNU Writing Movement?

[BWindle]

Not to be confused with the 'GNU Bowel Movement'

Re:GNU Writing Movement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well enough about the HURD.

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?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[MisterBlister]

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.

Seep into the open-source world? It already poured in a long time. It has always been an issue but the first time it came to a head in a major way was the QT/GPL war of a few years back. And you're right; this sort of thing sucks and wars over the exact lettering of different licenses and how they may or may not be compatible with other licenses is one of the major factors holding OSS/FS back from more mainstream acceptance.

This sort of thing is, RIGHT NOW, scaring off corporations who don't want to even think about the legal hassles that might be involved with trying to comply with 10 different OSS/FS licenses. As an example, they may wish to integrate their software into a non-Windows OS (such as Linux) without reinventing the wheel and recreating various existing open libraries. When they take a look at the potential complexity involved, from a legal standpoint (not technical!), they just say 'fuck it' and keep going the closed-source/Windows-only route.

I've seen this happen first hand at two different companies; engineers want to open things up, management looks into OSS/FS, sees the drubbing from the community (and threats of lawsuits everywhere!) other companies take when attempting to go OSS/FS while making very minor missteps with license compliance, usually due to the semantics of trying to mix multiple OSS/FS licenses. Management tends to nix the idea very quickly.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[dewdrops]

amen. i'm sick of hearing that the GNU borg has approved or not approved a certain group's contribution this week.

in STallman's original USENET posting, he writes "I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement." Note he writes that he couldn't sign a license agreement... hrm; like the license agreement he forces anyone who wants to put any GNU code into their projects to do ?

Having no licenses was the original idea of open source and should remain so.

That's what made open source software so nice; you could hack without worrying about strange, arbitrary laws governing which code you can use and which you can't. Just download the code you need and go; everyone is happy.

but with all of the slightly different licenses to keep track of and all of the political infighting, it's becoming just as bad as (or even worse than) closed source software.

dd

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[RollingThunder]

Gah! Posting to revoke the mistaken mod. I meant "Insightful" and bumped the scrollwheel before clicking, turning it into "Redundant". NOT what I wanted to do.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[damiam]

Hmmmm - still seems to be there. Is this a bug?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[damiam]

scaring off corporations who don't want to even think about the legal hassles that might be involved with trying to comply with 10 different OSS/FS licenses.

As opposed to the legal hassels of trying to comply with 10000 give-us-your-firstborn-son proprietary licenses? At least open source people are less likely to sue than huge multi-billion dollar corporations.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The type of the last moderation sticks, even if it has been taken back due to the moderator's comment, but the score has been recovered.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[MisterBlister]

Can you name some exact examples instead of just linking to Microsoft? I'm not aware of any major proprietary-licensed API or software product that disallows you from using it with some other software due to the other software's license...And that's the main sticking point for using OSS/FS for many companies.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Guylhem]

Alas, I'm not the one who decices. No I didn't wake up someday and said to myself "let's use a non free license to piss off debian people". We had a license. We decided to use it. Then we had a problem - I'm just doing my best to work around it.

Here we have a license problem (you read the Debian story did you? Hmm? Yes I know that's slashdot :-) I didn't make it up. It is really a problem. Debian was going to move most of the LDP documents out of its main tree. We did everything in a hurry and it's now (mostly) fixed. But *prevention* is better - I'd rather have avoided this problem altogether!

In the imaginary problem you present, rewriting all the manpages doesn't sound like a good solution. It would also be counterproductive since most of them are available under a free license.

Which aren't? There you will need the GWM. We will be able to tell precisely which document is not free (free={GPL,FDL,BSD,OPL...}) and then we can rewrite that very document.

The bad solution is forgetting the license problem until it finds you.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[ryants]

Note he writes that he couldn't sign a license agreement... hrm; like the license agreement he forces anyone who wants to put any GNU code into their projects to do ?

From the GPL, section 5:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

You aren't forced at all. If you want to benefit from his (and others') work, then these are the rules you have to play by. You can't take without giving. If you don't like it, don't use their work. It's that simple.

That's what made open source software so nice; you could hack without worrying about strange, arbitrary laws governing which code you can use and which you can't. Just download the code you need and go; everyone is happy.

That what the page at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLC ompatibleLicenses is for. Makes it simple.

it's becoming just as bad as (or even worse than) closed source software.

How do you figure that? You have 0 rights with closed source/non-free software.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[dewdrops]

"You aren't forced at all. If you want to benefit from his (and others') work, then these are the rules you have to play by. You can't take without giving. If you don't like it, don't use their work. It's that simple."

Microsoft et. al. would say the exact same thing about their software.

which was my original point; GNU getting into the license police is starting to make open source software just as hard to deal with as closed source software.

i'm not a lawyer and don't want to become one; i just want to hack and make things without having to dealing with all these licenses.

dd

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[ryants]

Microsoft et. al. would say the exact same thing about their software.

Uhm... except you don't have access to MS code. So... what are you talking about?

i'm not a lawyer and don't want to become one; i just want to hack and make things without having to dealing with all these licenses.

Yeah... see, you just visit that "Compatible Licenses" page... if the license of the code you wish to use is compatible with the license you wish to use, proceed, else stop. Is that so difficult?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[DeviantLinux]

I don't think that the rational between this project is to add more restrictions.

It appears that this project is going to (attempt to) take the various documentation, accept what is released under the FDL (and compatible) licences, and sort/catalog/improve it.

This seems to be more of a Sourceforge for documentation then an attempt at licence-wrangling.

But if I am wrong, then ya, I agree with you. We need another licence like we need another X-tris variant.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a licence agreement. Get your terms right.

Licence agreements are about what you can do in your own home.

The GPL is not a licence agreement. It doesn't restrict you in your own home. It's only when you make public a derivitive work that you are bound by the GPL licence.

Who are you speak for the true origins of open source?

There is no such thing as leaving politics out of it. You obviously have an agenda and you wish others to obey it. Congratulations, welcome to politics.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU getting into licence police? They've been there for 15 years - what's next? Ford gets into cars?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[cjwatson]

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

It's baffling to me too why you think we think that. :-) Nobody in Debian objects to documentation being under the same free licence as the software it documents.

why does Debian feel the need to exacerbate this shortcoming even further?

The "GNU Writing Movement" wasn't started by Debian. I think you've got your people mixed up.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[jbailey999]

Learn the difference between a License agreement and a Copyright Assignment.

The rule is that anything that is Copyright the FSF, must be wholly copyright the FSF, or they weaken their position to defend it in court. Some GNU projects don't assign their copyright, but in that case, if someone violates copyright the FSF can't get involved to prosecute.

Your view on what makes "Open Source" software (Which GNU software isn't...) so nice completely disregards copyright law. Certainly in the US and Canada, any document, piece of software, etc. that does NOT have a copyright statement and/or license agreement is automatically copyright the author and is restricted from being copied.

Welcome to the real world.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Guylhem]

Not only FDL compatible licenses or just documentation licenses- all free licenses.

The GPL, the BSD license, the OPL for exemple will be perfectly fine.

But anyway you got my point - the project will be a kind of sourceforge for documentation.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Arandir]

When it comes to license compliance, you only need to worry about libraries. As long as the application gives you the right to use it, don't worry about it. But libraries are a different matter.

And when it comes to proprietary libraries, I am not aware of any that restrict how you may license your own application that links to it. Many require royalties for distributing your app, restrict how the library itself may be distributed, etc., but when it comes to restricting what you can do with your own original code, no proprietary license even comes close to certain "Free Software" licenses.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[nmos]

"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."

You're probably baffled because the "Debian nuts" never said anything like the above. What exactly gave you the idea that this was even an issue?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[nmos]

" I've seen this happen first hand at two different companies; engineers want to open things up, management looks into OSS/FS, sees the drubbing from the community (and threats of lawsuits everywhere!) other companies take when attempting to go OSS/FS while making very minor missteps with license compliance, usually due to the semantics of trying to mix multiple OSS/FS licenses. Management tends to nix the idea very quickly."

That's just plain silly. Companies in the closed source world sue each other over IP all the time but can you think of even one of the OSS/FS licensing issues that has actually resulted in a law suit?

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[nmos]

"Having no licenses was the original idea of open source and should remain so. "

If you have no license then you cannot legally make copies (at least in the US).

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, yes, it's a bug.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[evilviper]

Debian nuts think documentation needs to be under its own special licence instead of using the GPL along with the software it documents.

I feel it prudent to point out the the GPL itself is not under the GPL license. I.E. You may not make modifications to it at all, only verbatim copying.

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.

As Stallman has needlessly pointed out to me many times, the GPL is about Free-Software not open source. In this argument, it is most telling because all of the politics and license disputes come from the freesoftware/GPL world. All of us BSDers have software and documentation that falls under the BSD license, or public-domain. I.E. No politics, no infrastructure is needed to bring about lawsuits when people violate the licenses (because who would stupid enough to violate those very liberal terms?)

It's long been said that the worst thing about the GPL is that people think the GPL is an acceptable Open-Source license. As you've discovered for yourself, it's quite accurate to call the GPL a communistic virus.

And moderators, it's not flame-bait, it's squarely on-topic... ($5 says I get moderated down for this).

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

If you actually bothered to visit the LDP and looked at http://linuxdoc.org/vlist.html you would have seen that "this guy" is Guylhem Aznar, Chief coordinator and main contact of the LDP.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Guylhem]

What else can I say ;-)

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you name some exact examples instead of just linking to Microsoft? I'm not aware of any major proprietary-licensed API or software product that disallows you from using it with some other software due to the other software's license...And that's the main sticking point for using OSS/FS for many companies.

Could you name some examples instead of just not linking to anything? I'm not aware of any free software licences that disallow you from using it with some other software due to the other software's license. So how is it a sticking point?

Before responding with any spurious crap about the GPL I'd recommend reading it and noting that it only prohibts some instances of distributing proprietary + GPL together, it makes NO limitations on use.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[Bronster]

I feel it prudent to point out the the GPL itself is not under the GPL license. I.E. You may not make modifications to it at all, only verbatim copying.

The reason that the GPL is not under the GPL is because it's an interface between the GPL world[tm] and copyright law.

If you modify the GPL, it is no longer the GPL - and hence does not provide the interface it is designed to provide.

It's long been said that the worst thing about the GPL is that people think the GPL is an acceptable Open-Source license. As you've discovered for yourself, it's quite accurate to call the GPL a communistic virus.

What you haven't addressed (Mr evilviper I'm not flame-bait your bad moerdators) is the fact that many people believe that a communistic virus is a very acceptable Open-Source license. Anything else is allowing people to use your code without sharing your ideals.

I'm sure communism (note the same root word as community) is overused as a dirty word - communism in this case is being used to refer to a virus that forces you to release derivative works back to the community - not something that makes you move to Russia and become a Marxist.

For my throw away tag line. Name a Russian who's had to go to America (land of the free and brave) to be attacked by the local KGB equivalent and thrown in jail without a trial. Oh yeah, that communism sure is the only system that doesn't care about people.

Re:Leave the politics out of it.

[evilviper]

If you modify the GPL, it is no longer the GPL - and hence does not provide the interface it is designed to provide.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. Perhaps we don't understand each other here.

If I was to take one line out of the GPL ("...or any future version") it would serve to guarantee that my code would be released under my own terms. I've been pointing out to people that Stallman and the Free-Software Foundation could stick a clause in the next GPL saying that GPL'ed software may be used in propritary applications if $500,000 is deposited into Stallman's unnamed Swiss bank account. So, as a GPL developer, you have about as much control over your code as BSDers... The difference being that BSDers don't live in the bright shiney imaginary world as GPLers. As always, it's a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap (parphrased Eric Cartman).

many people believe that a communistic virus is a very acceptable Open-Source
license

As Stallman pointed out to me many times, the GPL is not about Open Source (and rightfully so) it is about Free Software. e.g. It is not an Open Source license at all. Secondly, practically no people believe a communistic license is acceptable at all. The problem is that the GPL has the hype, and people don't realize what they are actually supporting and promoting.

Finally, GPL is communistic in the sense that it is harshly anti-corporate. Stallman has announced that he would prefer if coders were forced to use the GPL. I.E. He doesn't even support your write to do what you want with your own program. He wants to crush all the software companies, but just as happened in Russia, I think he will discover that his system is inherently flawed. If commercial software companies go out of business, the open source projects will fail as well. I could go into more detail, but this post is already far too long.

Finally, I always have a good laugh when I hear about a GPL project soliciting commercial support. Gnome and KDE are both trying to get corporate money to support the development of the software that is trying to lead to the downfall of those same comapanies.

I don't think anyone can argue that Stallman is not a communist, a wannabe dictator, and a hyppocrite.

Please keep posts on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing here has anything to do with the B-52's. God are they really going to be 80 years old? It seems like only yesterday that Love Shack came out. That is so sad.

Does anyone really even give a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucken GPL nazis...whining because the LDP doesn't use the "holy" GPL.

GNU == SHIT

Re:Does anyone really even give a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Your exactly right. Once again, the Stallmanites(or should I say Stalinites) waste time because something is not "free" enough. I use linux everyday and this sort of nonsense is exactly what is holding back linux from its full potential.

uhh ohh...

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems that you have upset the holy Saint Ignucius why doesn't that fucking Taliban Richard Stallman shave his beard?

Re:uhh ohh...

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS is not Taliban! The Taliban don't willingly get their pictures taken. Especially while sniffing on some dildo. The reason he isn't going to shave that beard is not because he is Taliban, it's because that's where he collects the fecal matter of strangers. How un-Islamic is that?

It won't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's this simple: Authors of free/open software have so little economic incentive to write good documentation that they very (and I mean very) seldom do so. This new organization, while obviously very well intentioned, won't change that.

Free/open software desperately needs much, much better documentation in two areas: End user docs and architecture/design/implementation docs for other programmers who want to work on or with the code. Until the basic economics of f/o software change, those needs won't change, either.

Re:It won't matter

[ryants]

Free/open software desperately needs much, much better documentation in two areas: End user docs and architecture/design/implementation docs for other programmers who want to work on or with the code.

And how is that different from non-free/closed source software?

Personally I think Free software has much better documentation. Yes, I am counting e.g. O'Reilly titles as Free Software documentation. I glance over to my bookshelf and see such useful titles as "sed & awk", "GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtools", "LaTeX", "Linux Core Kernel", etc etc.

Re:It won't matter

[Guylhem]

It may come a time when the GWM will receive enough donation to be able to pay authors to produce free software books.

We are well intentioned and may change that situation.

Re:It won't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

For small projects it's true but it's not like RTFM didn't come out of no where. Writing a manual can get people out of your face so you can code again.

Also, although it's not taken too seriously, I sometimes begin projects by writing a manual. I draw screenshots and write about the functions of the software. It's prototyping without code and much quicker.

What a joke....

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder M$ isn't worried! Or it could be those developers, developers, developers....

Snot & Snot-Free Slashdot Editors

[The WIPO Troll]

THE OFFICIAL TACO-SNOTTING FAQ By The WIPO Troll, $Revision: 1.13 $

Why have I been receiving emails from some guy called "CmdrTaco," in which he seems to be speaking in some kind of code language?

You have been receiving email from a certain Robert "CmdrTaco" Malda, owner of the popular technology website Slashdot. Actually, it's not a very "popular" site in the common sense of the word; the site is rife with pimply, antisocial geeks, zit-faced nerds, dirty GNU hippies and communists, and other societal rejects. It's also home to the world's most infamous pædophile ring, the "Slashdot crew."

Whenever CmdrTaco gets bored (and who wouldn't, running a site like Slashdot all day), he roams through the Slashdot database, penis in hand, looking for people who might enjoy engaging in homosexual orgies with him. How he determines this is anyone's guess; but if you have a homosexual-sounding nickname, or a nick with the letter P or E in it, you're in trouble.

And this time, he found you. Lucky you.

CmdrTaco's code language is relatively easy to decipher. He prefers to speak in thinly-veiled sexual innuendo to evade the watchful (but relatively stupid) eye of Slashdot's parent corporation, VA Software. CmdrTaco's "Commander" is, of course, his penis -- a small, withered little thing that lives in his pants and only comes out in the presence of other male geeks or at the beck and call of CmdrTaco's own lubed-up right hand. His "Taco bells" are the shriveled testicles that droop beneath his Commander, and his "Taco sauce" is his thick, gooey semen. It should be more than obvious to you now what he means if he asked you to "ring his Taco bells" or "taste his gourmet Taco sauce."

Lastly, there is the practice he refers to as "Taco-snotting" and the more revolting "circle-snot."

Good Lord. What is "Taco-snotting?"

"Taco-snotting" is the term used by CmdrTaco to refer to an act of fellating a homosexual man (or unwilling heterosexual; CmdrTaco is rumoured to prefer rape), then blowing the semen out his nose onto the face and body of his partner or victim. Naturally, a long, bubbly stream of milky-white semen is left on CmdrTaco's face, dribbling out of his nose and down his cheek: hence the term, "Taco-snotting."

A "circle-snot" is a Taco-snotting circle-jerk, another practice common among the Slashdot crew. CmdrTaco, CowboiKneel, and Homos get together and snot each other with their gooey, sticky cum -- spooging their jizz-snot all over each other's faces and pasty, white bodies, until they're covered head to toe with their own and each other's man juice. This vile ritual can go on for hours. For the homosexual penetration that follows this lengthy foreplay, Roblowme is usually there to provide plenty of anal lubricant; he owns a limo service and has ample supplies of motor oil and axle grease ready to go.

To complete this perverted orgy, fellow geeks Michael, Timothy, and Jamie will usually join in, dressed in tight leather mock-S.S. uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves. The whole group then proceeds to snot each other's spunk and whip each other's pudgy asses with riding crops and chains until their pale, white geek bodies are exhausted and soaked in stinking sweat from the hours of passionate, homosexual revelry.

Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?

Hopefully.

You most likely forgot to uncheck the "Willing to Taco-snot" checkbox in your account preferences. CmdrTaco has probably already got the hots for your wad, and he's probably already been lurking outside your bathroom window for weeks with a camera, some tissues and lube. There's no escaping a geek in heat, so it's probably too late for you, but you can possibly rectify this situation. To remove yourself from CmdrTaco's sights, log into your Slashdot account, go to your user page, click on Messages, and uncheck the box next to "Willing to Taco-snot." Maybe he'll ignore you. Probably not.

I can't stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?

If you indulge him in a Taco-snot or two, he might leave you alone. You might also want to look into mail filtering, restraining orders, or purchasing a heavy, blunt object capable of warding off rampaging homosexual geeks in heat. Trust me, when they charge... oh, the humanity. If he gets you, and you let him Taco-snot you, you will most likely end up tied up in his basement to be used as his sex slave for the rest of your life (or until he accidentally drowns you in spunk in a circle-snot).

Have you ever been Taco-Snotted?

Unfortunately, yes. I first met CmdrTaco at an Open Source Convention. He invited me back to his room for a game of Quake and some "gourmet Tacos," but when I got there, he jumped me and tied me to his bed, stripping me. After taking his "Commander" out of his pants, Mr. Taco made me suck the withered thing six times. He then performed his vile Taco-snotting ritual on me three times over the next two hours, bringing me to orgasm after sweaty, mind-numbing orgasm... then he snotted my own milky-white jizz back onto my face, into my mouth, then again on my exposed belly.

CmdrTaco invited several of his Open Source (or rather, "Open Sauce" -- man sauce) buddies over to continue the twisted snotfest. Linux Torvalds raped my ass with his "monolithic kernel," and Anal Cox used his "network stack" in a multitude of unspeakable ways on and in every orifice in my defenseless body. Michael was there in his leather Nazi uniform, caning my ass with a bamboo pole and ranting about "all those Censorware freaks out to get him."

How did you finally escape, you ask? After about 16 hours of countless homosexual atrocities perpetrated against my restrained body, they all finally went to sleep on top of me, sweat-soaked and exhausted. I was left there, covered in bubbly, translucent jizz-snot, chained to the bed, with half a dozen fat, pasty-white fags lying around and on top of me. Fortunately the spooge coating my flesh worked wonderfully as a lubricant; I was able to squirm my way out of the handcuffs and slip out the back door. I'm just glad I survived the ordeal. These geeks had a lot of built-up spunk in their wads -- I could've easily been drowned!

That's horrible. Does "Taco-snotting" have anything to do with CmdrTaco's "special taco"?

No, that's a different disgusting perversion CmdrTaco indulges himself in. CmdrTaco is usually not satisfied with merely snotting your own jizz back onto your face, he most often enjoys involving his own bodily fluids in his twisted games. WeatherTroll has spent some time trying to educate the Slashdot readership about this vile practice (emphasis added):

You may be wondering what CmdrTaco's "special taco" is. You will be wishing that you hadn't been wondering after you finish reading this post. To make his "special taco", CmdrTaco takes a taco shell and shits on it. He then adds lettuce, jacks off on the taco, and adds a compound to make the person who eats the taco unconscious. Of course, the compound does not make the person unconscious until the taco is fully eaten. Thus CmdrTaco force-feeds the taco to the unsuspecting victim.

After the victim is unconscious, he is held against his will and used for CmdrTaco's nefarious sexual purposes. This includes shoving taco shells up the victim's ass, Taco-snotting, and getting Jon Katz involved.

Completely different, yet no less revolting. It should be clear to you now that CmdrTaco is a very, very sick individual, as are most of the Slashdot editors.

Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.

Actually, Jon Katz is a homosexual pædophile. He's also a coprophiliac, and, many suspect, a zophile. Jon Katz is somewhat of a loner and doesn't involve himself in circle-snots. Mr. Katz usually engages in a game called " Katz juicy-douching" with his harem of little-boy slaves: a vile practice which involves administering an enema to himself of the little boy's urine (forced out of them with a pair of pliers), spooging the vile muck from his ass back into the enema bag, then squirting and slathering the goo all over himself, and the little boy's chained-up and naked bodies. If he's in the mood, he will sometimes skip refilling the enema bag and just squirt it from his ass onto his boys. Unwilling boys are further tortured with the pliers until they comply and allow Mr. Katz to juicy-douche them for the rest of their lives.

As I already said, Mr. Katz is also a zophile. As if the sexual escapades with the helpless little boys aren't enough, Jon usually enjoys his juicy-douches best when his penis is firmly planted in a female goat's anus. He is also rumoured to get off on watching his little boys eat the goat's small, bean-like turds.

...Are you getting hard writing this?

Why, yes. :) Join me in a WIPO-snot?

No, thanks. I'm already CmdrTaco's boi toi.

________________________________________ RECENT READER COMMENTS

Once comments have been archived by Slashdot, they're removed from the Official Taco-Snotting FAQ. However much I would like to paste 200k crapfloods into Slashdot, my browser is a piece of shit and won't let me!

1. Re:Taco-Powered Christmas Snot (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.15 7:05 (#2707493)

   Has this been submitted to linuxdoc.org yet?

2. Re:Bye bye Windows! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.15 5:12 (#2707245)

   That may be true, but have you made love to a wombat today?

3. Re:That's my department, boy! (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward (actually afree87) on 2001.12.15 2:51 (#2706921)

   Wow, WipoTroll, you really know how to snot! And you can scramble Slashdot's HTML, too! I love boys who do that! Come over to my place sometime!

4. Re:CmdrTaco BANNED FOR LIFE from Taco Bell!!!!!! (Score:-1) by WeatherTroll on 2001.12.15 2:48 (#2706907)

   CmdrTaco only goes to Taco Bell to get their hot sauce, and to solicit hot sauce enemas from underage male employees. He makes his own tacos.

5. Re:Snottle OSnotX, BSnotD, and Snottan Snottard (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward (actually afree87) on 2001.12.15 2:47 (#2706900)

   We love you, WipoTroll! We want you to snot us, WipoTroll!

6. Re:Bye bye Windows! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.15 1:35 (#2706675)

   I want some Taco-snot! Where can I get some?

7. Re:Bye bye Windows! (Score:-1) by JonKatz on on 2001.12.15 0:29 (#2706495)

   Please, please, please Taco-snot me. I know I would love it almost as much as fucking young boys. Pleadingly, JonKatz

8. Important Information For Slashdot Users (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.14 3:09 (#2702660)

   It has recently come to my attention that the entire Slashdot crew engage in homosexual activities. CmdrTaco is one such person, and has dedicated his life to spreading the ideals of Taco-Snotting while enjoying the benefits of it. For further information on Taco-Snotting please refer to George WIPO Bush's Taco-Snotting FAQ which can be easily found by searching for the Slashdot journal of George WIPO Bush or by looking in the comments of Slashdot articles (Usually modded -1).

   It has also come to my attention that CmdrTaco has other interests besides homosexuality (Believe it or not). One such interest includes a budding music career with a song titled "Gaping Anus". The details are sketchy on this topic but I do know that besides the lead vocals of CmdrTaco, it includes Timothy and CowboyNeal (Also members of the Slashdot crew). There has been no release date set for this album or which record label it will be produced under. I believe CmdrTaco is planning to set up his own label, Taco-Snotting Records, with the intention of releasing the song on a cd-single with various remixes as soon as possible (To catch the current popularity of the Taco-Snotting fad). On a side note, I would not believe this fad will ever wear out (like a Snotted-out-geek); I am sorry to say Taco-Snotting is here to stay :-(. Various remixes of Gaping Anus will include: "Extra Jizz", "Snot Me Baby One More Time", "www.Goatse.cx", and "Once You Taco-Snot, You Can't Stop". I am sure many, many, more are sure to come. I predict this album will be a very hot seller this holiday season, especially with in or out of closet homosexuals, and with those who have no self-respect (Readers of Slashdot).

   Through a good, non-homosexual friend of mine, I have recieved a copy of the lyrics to the Gaping Anus musical composition. Included after the lyrics is a very speical tribute written by yours truely. Perhaps CmdrTaco will ask me to provide the vocals. Please feel free to read the lyrics and post your comments and disgust. E-mail CmdrTaco with this disgust also.

   BTW, please do not reply with the intention of flaming me because the lyrics are a rip-off of Insane Clown Posse's "Slim Anus". For more information on ICP and Slim Anus refer here and here. CmdrTaco is the author of this fine musical work and not me. So, it is obviously he who has ripped off ICP and not me. Thank you.

   Read the rest of this shit...

9. Re:Snotback: Snotto, Snotz, Snottion (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.14 2:44 (#2702581)

   you know, every time i read this i want to punch you more and more. the taco snotting thing is old, lame, boring, and over done. it never was remotely funny or good though. it sounds like a 10th grader wrote it too. so please, go play in traffic or shut the fuck up so real trolls can post.

10. Re:Italics are yummy! (Score:-1, Troll) by Super Mario Troll on 2001.12.14 2:33 (#2702535)

    Keep up the good work! Educate the masses to the dangers of Taco-Snotting!

    It's a me, the Super Mario Troll! Would you like to see my gaping troll anus
11. Re:Italics are yummy! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.14 1:41 (#2702370)

    WIPO - Man you trolls are shit compared to Egg Trolls troll's. Egg Man is just so much more original.

12. Re:The WIPO Troll Announces Portable Snotbox (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.07 7:58 (#2669658)

    That leaky sound you hear is CmdrTaco pissing himself after seeing this.

    Slashdot trolling just got a whole lot easier...

    http://www.geocities.com/frostpist/

    Spread the word!

13. Re:The WIPO Troll Announces Portable Snotbox (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.07 5:48 (#2669422)

    Q: Is CmdrTaco gay?

    A: He Mos' certainly is!

14. Re:The WIPO Troll Announces Portable Snotbox (Score:-1) by GaylordFucker on 2001.12.07 5:39 (#2669394)

    not to mention... The WIPO Troll used himself as a test subject to try out the portable snotbox... i await your results and hope your product gets approved...

    Regards, Gay

    Get that rats nest off your head, you numbskull -- Wesley Willis

15. Re:Portable Snotcube! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.07 3:58 (#2669117)

    stfu. no one really cares about your lame little "troll". make some new material (not that anything you've ever said is worth a damn..)

16. Re:Yum yum taco-snotting! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.02 22:15 (#2644499)

    Dear SLASH crew - this post makes it clear why you need to add a new category - "tell it like it is (+1)"

17. This is getting old (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.02 20:14 (#2644227)

    Hey dicksuck, why don't you come up with new troll material? Everyone has seen the tacosnotting 100 times already. Fuckwit. Assholage. Gay. Lick my anal nectar.

18. Fucking hilarious too bad it didnt get a 5:Funny (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.02 19:01 (#2644105)

    this is good shit man

19. Re:Taco-snotting@Home! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Dark_Cobra87 on 2001.12.01 23:03 (#2642180)

    Oops, forgot to check that Taco-snot option...

20. Re:Fuck Linux! Fuck him hard! (Score:-1) by Fecal Troll Matter on 2001.12.01 20:55 (#2641791)

    Mmmmmmm, Taco Sauce...

    Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)

21. Look (Score:-1) by ArchieBunker on 2001.12.01 20:19 (#2641679)

    I love trolling but this shit is getting old, fast. At least start mixing them up a little bit. How about the 'How OSM was Freed' series?

    http://www.naawp.org/

22. Re:Congratulations! You have been WIPO'd!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.01 8:37 (#2640602)

    Stop posting this! I've got hangover and Taco Snotting doesn't make me feel any better.

    I'm really glad that Taco Snotting is illegal here in Europe.

________________________________________

• The URL of this document is http://slashdot.org/journal.pl? op=display &uid=267426 &id=2346.
• Previous revisions are maintained at http://slashdot.org/journal.pl? op=display &uid=308209.

$Id: tacosnotting.html,v 1.13 2001/12/15 23:00:00 wipo Exp $

Copyright © 2001 The WIPO Troll. Verbatim crapflooding of this document is permitted in any medium, provided this copyright notice is preserved, and next time you take a dump, you think of the WIPO Troll and all he's done to make Slashdot a better place.

Link

[Bitsy Boffin]

Link in the article is broken, this is the fixed one (hmm, what's this it says down here, could it be "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!")...

Why so complicated?

[chuck]

Perhaps I don't understand the pure joy of releasing information with 1000 conflicting licenses. If I were to write documentation for an existing software project, I would simply contribute it to the original author, so it may be released with the distribution, under the same license as the software.

Does my naivete in this matter mean that the author will exploit my contribution to the project, and use it in a way that I didn't intend? Who cares? If the software is "less free" than the documentation, isn't that a problem anyway? And if the software is "more free" than the documentation, isn't that just dumb?

Man, some people are just looking for a fight.

Re:Why so complicated?

[nmos]

AFAIK this issue is mainly about documentation that is distributed seperately such as HOWTOs etc. So what happens if you want to update a HOWTO but the author is unreachable? If the HOWTO is under a license that requires permission from the author to modify it then your only choices are to either re-write it from scratch or let it rot.

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.

Re:Fantastic...

[xueexueg]

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,

What are you talking about? Right in the summary it says "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"

The project is about taking down unnecessary barriers, not putting them up.

Re:Fantastic...

[pongo000]

I'm talking about what it looks like I'm talking about. If the project doesn't compete with existing documentation projects, that simply means documentation will be hosted in more than one repository -- how will I know which repository is most current, unless I specifically cross-check each doc before downloading? If the multiple repositories will be synced up, why have multiple repositories? Finally, if non-competition means developers deciding which repository to release their docs to, then there will be duplicated efforts through the maintenance of multiple repositories.

Regardless of what the submitter says (and what you quote), the existence of multiple repositories will, in some way, increase the burden of work on multiple repository maintainers, developers and doc writers, and most of all, simply users who don't want to have to search multiple repositories for documentation.

One solution might be a "master" index of all the existing repositories...but I suppose one party will be miffed if they find themselves in the same listing as another party who differ ideologically, in which case we'll have to have multiple "master" indices to assuage all the hard feelings!

Re:Fantastic...

[Guylhem]

Alas, the OSWG died of a slow and painful death - here's the death certificate BTW : http://www.oswg.org/.

The LDP is just about writing documentation. If you add the BSD doc proj., the GNOME doc. proj and the KDE doc proj you have 99% of the documentation that's currently produced.

The OSWG did try to become a meta-documentation project. It failed. Too bad. But we still need some kind of organisation around the documentation projects, for exemple to sponsor authors, decide common documentation formats or rewrite non-free or bad documentation, etc.

Just consider the free software world and the number of organisations (LPI, GNU, Open something) which try to support individual projects.

Now consider the free documentation world, where there is *only* 4 significant projects, and no meta organisation *at all*.

It's not about fragmentation or waisting effort- it's the beggining of a collaborative work. If the LDP, the GDP, the LDP and BSD doc. want to build bridges, we (GWM) will be there to help them. If they don't, we will still collect documentation and try to combine the fruit of they effort.

That's the beauty of free software - you can build on someone else's work.

Re:Fantastic...

[Guylhem]

Everything will be automatic. The idea is you give us a URL from which we can pull your document.

We do centralise documents on one website because even if you think an additional repository is a "problem", it helps.

Nobody should have to go to 10 different places to try to find one document. Everything can be found from one place. When you want to get new software, do you go to sourceforge.net/freshmeat.net or some guy's obscure website?

Answer: you do both. You find the guy's website with sourceforge.net/freshmeat.net. There's an advantage with sf.net : if the website is down or if the coder move, you still have a mirrored copy on sf.net.

Re:Fantastic...

[wfrp01]

Now we have three open-source/free software doc projects: The featured project, LDP, and OSWG.

Open source and free software are not the same thing. They are very similar, but they do in fact have different points of view and differing objectives. Licenses are one of the more powerful tools these organizations can use to advance thier position.

Your point seems to be that you don't really care about all this balony, you just want the documentation. If that's all you care about, then these organizations are truly redundant. But there's more to it than that.From the preamble of the GNU Free Documentation License:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

To some people, these things matter - a lot. There are issues to consider besides just making the documentation "available". Like ensuring that it will remain available. It makes perfect sense that groups would organize in support of these principles.

Re:Fantastic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just shut up with all this whining. Clearly you have no experience on these matters and your critisisms are very negative. They do not contribute in any way. If you mean to critizise, first know what you're talking about, then point out well-thought out solutions. It does help to take a 5 minute break before posting.

Having multiple repositories is a good thing. With sites going on and off the net several times a day, it's nice to be able to find the same stuff somewhere else. Not to mention if a sites goes off the network completely. Just because it takes a bit more work than a oh-weee-a-sentralized solution, it makes a much more robust system and can be automatized to alleviate future work. It's when people don't make the effort and trouble of actually thinking about what can go wrong, we get into trouble. What can go wrong, will go wrong, but it shouldn't be a big problem.

Regarding your attitude against people that actually care about what license and software they use, please bear in mind that they probably have good reasons and good intentions for doing so. Even if they do stupid things one time that you didn't agree with, doesn't mean their intention is bad. You and me, we do stupid things too. It doesn't mean anything. It's people that never did stupid things you should be suspicious of!

Myself, I think this is fantastic. A person working on something for free what he thinks is important for free software (not open source), others and himself. Unless you are in a similar position, I can't really say anything you say is of any weight. Then you just don't get it.

Hint: Ideology is not something you say, it's something you DO. Be an example for the rest.

Re:Fantastic...

[jotaeleemeese]

I thought that any written work released into the "Public Domain" has all the advantages you mentioned.

Why to invent licensing (or should it be copyright?) methods that as far as I can tell are lready defined and achieve the same ends?

Actually, what you need is a public network SQL.

[NRAdude]

Incorporate some bonified Free Software that can syncronize with this database of the internet and you have just another program with a purpose. A good puprose! Have a plan for developers of every software package in existance to submit their helping text to this database. This way, you don't have to visit a program's author and download a compressed archive, extract files, read the INSTALL and README instructions, and run the three or four de-facto commands to build and install.

That was my bone with Linux, see... To get a program, I search freshmeat.net, search Linuxgames.com, and happypengiun.org for something of use and I find something that is a pain to install. Why not make a database that project authors can submit their documentation, provide some easy-to-use URL's, and a GUI for installing the program or at the verry least an intelligent Makefile that uses some calls to gtk-shell, TCL-TK, Perl, or Python; or anything you can think of that won't segfault or crash in its own installation scripts. We need that, and better for all authors to have the help menu on their program to point to this helper database.

Now, now... You trolls are all going to tell me that is the purpose of freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net. Well, those two websites are environments suited for web-browsers and they are both tailored mainly to developers and enthusiasts. Slashdot is such a place where we cann all discuss software, events, and all kinds of stuff. In fact, many Linux programs are first planned from a good idea from a slashdot reader; we are a good development forum I might add. Back to the software I'm talking about, let's think of our grandparents and cousins that don't understand what "compile" and "symbolic link" means. They should be using a help database system that lets them search for a peice of software based on search criteria and the database says simply what a peice of software does and provides a 1-click button for testing your system for compatibility, compilation, installation, setup, and more supporting text on howto use a software package; like flipping through the pages of an encylopedia, not like using xpdf, man, emacs, vi, and all the popular legacy software I forgot to mention.

Microsoft has a help database in their operating system. It isn't used much, but we should improve on that idea with it being built upon a gui, searchable, etc.

technical writers need money too

[perdida]

I remember when people said the software was gonna be free, it was thru support and documentation that they were gonna make money.

Now the documentation is going into the GNU-virus? How are people around the computer field supposed to make money?

If, on the other hand, you are trying to de-legitimize Linux as an economic activity, making it an artistic activity instead, this isn't the way to go about it. You need guns for that.

People have to make money (in this society) when they spend a lot of time and resources in something. Otherwise they starve or they lose sleep or other needed resources. They will fight for this availability to make money, no matter what.

Re:technical writers need money too

[YKnot]

No matter how good the documentation is, understanding a complex system well enough to customize it is more than many users and companies want to waste their time on. The beauty of programming and computers is that you have to understand things and then just do them right once. Repetition is a computer's job. In consequence, the only reasonable jobs in this field are the non-repetitive tasks: Consulting, administration, custom development and if you can find sponsoring: adding to the free pool of software and documentation.

Re:technical writers need money too

[datawar]

Kill computers! People whose sole skill is using slide rules need food too!

Re:technical writers need money too

[Guylhem]

Thanks for the high quality of your comment. Yes I'm making a living, and yes I only do free software. It also pays my studies.

I'm sure I could try to make more money if I renounced to my ethics, but I just don't want to. Consider that as a personal issue.

And yes, I do bear arms. And BTW - I live in Europe, not in the US. Here it's not a constitutional right. You've got to be part of rifle association.

Re:technical writers need money too

[AxelBoldt]

People have to make money (in this society) when they spend a lot of time and resources in something. Otherwise they starve or they lose sleep or other needed resources. They will fight for this availability to make money, no matter what.


That's simply inaccurate. Many people play chess without being paid for it. Many people program without being paid for it. Many people build garden railways without being paid for it. In fact, most of what people do is not paid work.

If you need money, may I suggest getting a job? This has nothing to do with free software, which is produced for the fun of it (and, by some, to make the world a better place).

Re:technical writers need money too

[nmos]

"Now the documentation is going into the GNU-virus? How are people around the computer field supposed to make money? "

That's a straw man. Nobody here has suggested that commercial publications need to suddenly be made free.

is it me?

[GaylordFucker]

or does nobody else give a flying rats ass about GNU? GNU is a communistic propoganda started by that hairy ape Richard Stallman It's so obvious that it sucks... anything written for free use and released on open source is pretty much telling the end-user "hi, download me so i can do no good to you and fuck up your computer".. it's a waste of time to even bother documenting free software... oh and not to mention... there's only ONE developer in this project... and there will only be one developer in this project... because everyone realizes how crappy GNU is... thank you... and remember... closed source/EULA is your friend

An excellent reference

[Leeji]

If this project becomes a centralized point of distribution or access (ie: SourceForge,) this could really help the open-knowledge community.

For example, many people run out to buy expensive assembler books when the best resource is available online. Or, they run out to buy expensive Linux device driver manuals when the best resource is available online.

Open-source software mainly helps people write new software that uses key techniques / algorithms from open software. Open-source documentation, on the other hand, helps impart the foundations on which the open-source programs get created.

Ideally, this openscience approach would spread -- and students wouldn't need to spend $500 per semester on textbooks. And unfortunately, the Project Gutenberg idea to import books as their copyright expires (50 years after the author dies) would never fly for technology-based books.

As a side note, this index of online books has a lot of good information.

Re:An excellent reference

[Phork]

currently the copyright on works by individuals is life+70 years.

Re:An excellent reference

[Guylhem]

You perfectly understand what I will try to acheive.

I'm not into the license wars - as long as it is free (as freedom) we will catalog it. We are mostly interested in free software but other documents, like project gutenberg books will also welcome.

Currently we are trying to find all the free documents available on the web, so comments like yours are very helpful. Do not hesitate to contact me if you know other places where one can find good documents.

The GWM *is* about building a centralized point of distribution for documentation, a one stop "shop" (forgive me for this word ;-)

There is no documentation sourceforge or freshmeat. Once we will have done that, we may try to raise funds, help with the rewritings, etc.

The GWM will be a meta organisation providing a catalog of free documentation. That's not reinventing the wheel.

Re:An excellent reference

[HiThere]

SourceForge is an excellent tool, but one must take care to not become over-dependant on it. It is already in a single- point- of- failure position for many projects, just because it *is* so convenient. But remember that it is owned by a public corporation, and one cannot afford to become excessively vulnerable. Corporations change their management and policies over time. At some point we must expect that we will be suddenly surprised. So we need to ensure that the surprise isn't catastrophic. This means mirrors. This means being very careful about any license agreements. etc. Even when code is GPL, the owner of the code can change the licensing (though they can't back-date the changes to cover previously copied versions). There are legal reasons why a project should be willing to turn over ownership (so someone else could manage any needed legal defense), but there are also reasons why they shouldn't. Consider carefully, the most important owned posession of many projects are their names. The code is, essentially, freely available to anyone for use without selling it. So if there is no intention to sell the code, then the name is the most important (non-human) asset. The right to say "This is ThingUmBob, and that is not!"

P.S.: note that the FSF also requires that ownership in the code be signed over. There are very good reasons to do this. But there are also good reasons to consider this a dubious practice. It creates a single point of failure. The GPL helps significanlty here, however, as only the changes since any relicensing was done can be affected.

Re:An excellent reference

[voiceofthewhirlwind]

For example, many people run out to buy expensive assembler books when the best resource is available online. [ucr.edu] Or, they run out to buy expensive Linux device driver manuals when the best resource is available online. [xml.com]

The problem isn't that the free material is more obscure, it's that its not as conveniently packaged as a printed book. I can only tolerate reading short news items and a screenful or two of text on a single topic at a time or longer work if it's proportionally less detailed/more vacuous. I certainly wouldn't want to read a chapter on assembly on a computer, but I'd read the same length of material in slashdot posts...

Barring cheap and non-eyestraining portable digital book readers, I think print shops (like the kinds that print out course packets at universities) should have a convenient way to print out books that are free online in a printer friendly format at the cost of the print job (conceivably this may be more than a mass produced book but otherwise unobtainable titles would be well worth it).

rms versus gnome/kde

[Anonymous Coward]

being affilated with the FSF isn't particuarly a good thing right now

mainly because of these two things:
rms and gnome don't particuarly like each other
rms and kde don't particuarly like each other

Re:rms versus gnome/kde

[AnonymousCowheard]

Did you ever look to wonder that Gnome and KDE are two dominant, proprietary desktop environments that have forked Linux software? A person with gnome can't run the mpeg-viewing program "kmpeg" and a person with KDE can't run the the SAMBA client program "gnomba".

There are desktop environments and then there are programs. They should be transparent to eachother. GTK is transparent to the desktop environments and makes an excellent application toolkit. We need more toolkit discussions and lets ditch the desktop development specifics. Motif and OpenDesktop did this a while back and luckily they have been eclipsed.

incentive?

[motherhead]

Free OS, free code, and now free support... i am wondering if some of our best brains are going to have to (in the future) put their open source projects on the back burner so that they can earn enough to make rent.

Not knocking GNU or opensource mind you. Just pointing out that geeks like toys as well as the next guy. Toys cost.

"...after all, we are not communists." ~ The Godfather

GPL - Intellectual Theft

[egg troll]

Hello,

Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.

Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.

So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.

I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.

Thank you for your time.

Re:GPL - Intellectual Theft

[KingAzzy]

I think its safe to say that you and I agree that only homos and terrorists would use something as crappy as Linux, however I am baffled as to why you opted to go instead with W2K instead of something more robust like Solaris, AIX, or HP/UX.

Hope you have good luck rewriting your app -- I recommend you ask your attorneys to research what damages you may be entitled to and a misrepresentation and fraud lawsuit against Torvalds and GNU.

HTH HAND
Azzy

Re:GPL - Intellectual Theft

[egg troll]

We went with Windows because we wanted something stable and robust. Its apparent that Unix still has a ways to catch up before its as mature as Windows. We may revisit this issue several years down the road.

Re:GPL - Intellectual Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable. As the concept of the FSF and GPLed software is, "If you let someone light their candle from from yours, do you then have the right to tell them what to do with that light?" this comment, however politely stated, is practically speaking to another point entirely. Apparently the actual services the company provides aren't intrinsically worth the monies being spent by their clientele, that is unless they are in the business of writing and selling APIs and the like. "To the victor, goes the spoils" avails to discussion based in strategy, not armaments.

Fix the man pages first!

[Anonymous Coward]

So many man pages out there are absolutely useless they are detrimental to read. Every single man page in existence should have at the least several accurate descriptions of the command's common usage.
For example, after showing the various flags to throw for "grep", why not then show some common examples using those flags as in: grep -i help your_file.txt? That would do wonders for people trying to learn the common commands and I have necer been able to figure out why this is not a common feature of man pages. Fix the basics first, then worry about how free some piece of documentation is and composing "book quality" documentation.

Re:Fix the man pages first!

[MisterBlister]

man pages assume you already know the command and are just using the page for reference, not for learning (eg. I know grep has a command for case-insensitivity, what is it now?). So that's why they are the way they are.

Having said that, though, I agree with your idea and think man pages could be made a lot more useful. Most commands with a billion switches (ls, etc) tend to only have a couple of those switches used by real people (and not shell scripts) on a day to day basis. Some sort of pointer into the most used switches and examples would be a Good Thing.

I believe a lot of this poor documentation (from an end user's view) is still a holdover from the 'White Coat Guru' attitude that still has sway over many UNIX users..You know, the 'RTFM' guys who believe they and they alone are on the 'cluetrain' because they know every obscure feature of sed and awk.

Re:Fix the man pages first!

[texchanchan]

Re, "...why not then show some common examples..." Examples are the one best tool for teaching somebody how to do something. Put a few in there and see how many man-hours are saved-- not just the user's, but the better-informed people they bother all day with questions.

Also, syntax (synopsis) code is very cryptic. It's straightforward enough after you learn it, but for a newbie all those [ ]s and { }s look like a barb-wire fence. Examples would clarify what the separate elements represent.

Re:Fix the man pages first!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's clear that all operating systems try to cram as many options into software - which is fine - but they present them all to the user regardless of their skill level. There needs to be a way of choosing a skill level and hiding options for users that define themselves as newbie.

I right-click in this mozilla window and get 20 items. My grandmother doesn't need to view source - most users don't.

Re:Fix the man pages first!

[atyr]

this is why shit like Oreilly's is great for a temporary solution to people who have money to toss around on books. They have wonderful books IMO as i do have a couple. Oreilly's actually take notice to inform you as if you dont know (which isnt this the point of trying to read a doc ?) Man pages arent all that need a good change. aside from documentation being outdated and somewhat useless they arent always the most descriptive of text. Maybe some type of standard is necessary for man and doc alike? One thing is sure, we would all like better and current documentation, so what are we going to do about it? Well, first we need more people to write these documents. Maybe send revised man pages to the projects maintainer. I personaly dont care about some new project, sure maybe it will be useful in the longrun, but right now we need people WRITING! otherwise any kind of website will be nothing less than useless. Its up to the author to license it. Did you find something wrong with it and its not free to edit? email him, its as simple as that. Stop saying "stop belly aching" or "quit whining" and do something. We arent asking for much, but some people would really like to learn including me. Whats it all for anyways? sigh...

Re:Fix the man pages first!

[Razzy]

I agree. While the man pages are meant as a reference, one should be able to get a basic idea of how to use the command from them. For example, "find" is an absolute disaster. I had to find a tutorial on the web (an entire article actually) before I could do the most basic searches with find. Part of this is because "find" is very strange, but the man is worthless.

You can make money off of GNU

[HanzoSan]

Free documentation = freedom to share it, people will still get paid to write it.

Re:You can make money off of GNU

[MisterBlister]

Free documentation = freedom to share it, people will still get paid to write it.

Heh hehehe heheh. What world do you live in?

Re:You can make money off of GNU

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the money come to the people who write it??

keep the eye on the ball, people

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so sick of nitpicking about "kinds" of free; ENOUGH already.

Why is it that all these "free license" people always seem to "greedy"? It's not enough for me to write something and hand it to you with my blessings, I have to GIVE you ALL rights to what I've written?

All this comes off as petty bickering. Everyone involved needs to stop inventing cute little acronym "groups", and start writing documentation; most of it sucks anyway; whenever I install linux these days, all of /usr/doc/LDP etc is skipped or removed, because its all outdated garbage. Shit, some of it's more than three years+ old. Its getting to be a challenge to find docs that are actually current with the status quo of linux software.

Why don't you boys stop the pissing match over whose license is "right", and actually fix the fucking documentation?

Re:keep the eye on the ball, people

[TooTallFourThinking]

I agree. Why can't things just be released into the fucking Public Domain? End of story. Put it out there and quit all this belly aching.

If the writer has altrusitc goals, what does it matter? The purpose is to help others. The point of all these different licenses is either for ego purposes or fear of misuse.

Maybe I've been listening to too much Carlin...

I Wupped Batman's Ass

[egg troll]

Batman got on my nerves
He was running me amok
He ridiculed me calling me a bum

I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass

Batman thought he was bad
He was a fucking asshole in the first place
He got knocked to the floor

I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass

Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor
I got back up and knocked him to the floor
He was being such a jackoff

I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass
I wupped Batman's ass

Wheaties, breakfast of champions

Listen up Newton-boy

[The Intrepid Travell]

It's well known that Newton was a facist whiner, hellbent on lowering the GPA of college students everywhere. Praising anything Newton has ever done is akin to praising CmdrTaco for taco-snotting some poor schmuck.

Re:Listen up Newton-boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that Newton died a virgin. Hmm, I wonder why?

Closing Doors

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello O'Reilly, who has been quite good to "the Movement": SLAM!!!

Oh! An opportunity for someone to make a living doing Open Source (writing books about Open Source): SLAM!!!

OK, the arguement is, noone is preventing the publising of books, merely creating an alternate channel. You are creating competition for these materials, which will hurt their bottom line. True, the best will win out, and, if a publisher provides a more desirable product, they will win.

However, based on some of the Microsoft-bashing that goes on, it will only be a matter of time before people are questioning if people are buying, say, O'Reilly books due to FUD. Also, some might just say, if it ain't an open standard, I don't even want to talk about it.

The "problems" went the other way around

[coyote-san]

As an author, I'm offended by your suggestion that the LDP, and by inference the authors of various documents, had "problems" with the Debian license.

It's the other way around. Debian manufactured a crisis and is trying to put the blame on the volunteer authors instead of accepting that their quest for ideological purity is going too far. If Debian has a problem with one of my documents, they're free to rewrite it from scratch. Paraphrasing is *not* sufficient.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[nomadic]

Don't get offended over all this; this endless wrangling over licenses just isn't worth that kind of emotional investment.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[Anonymous Coward]

Debs are arrogant retards anyway. Just because they had a package system before some other distros, they think they're awesome. Usually they let their "stable" distribution get so old it's unusable though. And then they use "unstable." Get ready for holes and bugs galore, folks!

Hamburgler
====
MMMM
====

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[big.ears]

If Debian has a problem with one of my documents, they're free to rewrite it from scratch.

This appears to be exactly what they're doing.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[wfrp01]

I'm curious. Is there something in particular about the licensing terms that Debian would like to impose that bothers you? What do you mean when you say their "ideological purity is going too far"? Or are you simply finding it annoying and burdensome that they would do this post facto?

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[cjwatson]

Debian did no such thing, and this story has nothing to do with Debian. I'm the Debian LDP maintainer and I found out about this project from Slashdot.

There is no such thing as "the Debian license". I don't know the details of your documents, but statistically they're more likely than not to be within Debian's definition of free (not that I suspect you care one way or the other).

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[Guylhem]

Debian may have a good resposability in the problem, but we are the ones who sticked to the LDPL.

I had no problem with the license, in fact I really enjoyed it. But people at Debian didn't.

I don't want to go in a license war - let them say which license they best like and I will A) try to be happy with that and b) forget what they did.

The idea behing the GWM is also to define what is acceptable as a free documentation license, so that other project (KDP, GDP) will not have the same problems the LDP had.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[Error27]

How exactly is Debian making a big deal about this?

They just decided to put the documents that don't meat DFSG in a non-free directory. It's not a big deal.

Slashdot is making a big deal out of this perhaps... And btw a lot of mis-informed comments like
this one and were moderated up last time so don't believe everything you read here.

There are only 273 LDP documents that don't meet Debian Free Software Guidelines. A lot of the authors of these articles probably don't care too much if people translate their documents or if people add things to make them distro specific etc. However, unless the author gives specific permision then it is illegal for Debian to do so.

Seriously though, as I look down the actual list of non-free documents I have a hard time seeing what the big deal is. Many of them don't really apply to Linux these days. Some dealt with old versions of X, the 2.2 kernel, old versions of red hat, old hardware, or integrating Linux and OS/2 for example etc. Some of them are amusing and have historical value like the coffee-howto. I was surprised that the apache-faq was non-free but that's about it. It's easy to forget how fast things change in the Linux world, reading through the list reminded me of that.

Conclusion: 1) Don't believe everything people say on slashdot. 2) Most people are happy with licenses like FDL or other free licenses so please consider using one. 3) If you don't use one Debian doesn't hate you, they'll just put your document in the non-free directory.

btw: If you want to know whether your LDP document does not meet DFSG just check this list. I really doubt your document is on it.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[coyote-san]

Look at your own language! Debian wants to "impose" a license on documents contributed by volunteer authors to a completely independent organization?!

Here's a clue: I write documents for my own purposes, and if I think they'll be useful to others I'm willing to invest a considerable amount of effort into preparing them for publication. I don't mind LDP changing formats as the tools improve (first LinuxDoc, now DocBook) because adhering to a *single* set of external constraints helps me ensure that I'll have few problems myself in the future. But I'll be damned if I'll meekly comply with demands from every third party that wants to act as a self-appointed editor. Today Debian wants me to drop everything to check my licenses, then next year Red Hat or Microsoft or the People Republic of Freedonia will be demanding that I make other "small" changes.

If Debian's argument has merit, then LDP will change what it accepts and I'll deal with it then. But until then, I see it as no different than being in a restaurant and having another patron suddenly demand that I leave the rest of my meal uneaten because, *gasp*, I was eating chicken and *they* are a vegetarian.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[wfrp01]

Debian wants to "impose" a license on documents contributed by volunteer authors to a completely independent organization?!

I don't understand how they can do this. They can only impose restrictions on what they find acceptable in their own organization. Isn't it their right to do so?

If you find their requirements unacceptable, then your documentation won't be distributed by Debian. If that bothers you, you'll have to deal with them. If it doesn't, why all the fuss?

To correct your restaurant analogy, it sounds like you're upset that a vegetarian restaurant won't serve you chicken.

Is there something in particular about Debian's requirements that upset you? Or are you just upset that they would impose standards at all? How tough is it, really, to change a license?

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[nmos]

" Look at your own language! Debian wants to "impose" a license on documents contributed by volunteer authors to a completely independent organization?! "

That's just completely wrong. Debian's rules only dictate wheather they will be able to distribute your documentation and if it will be in the main tree or in the non-free section. No one is "imposing" anything on you.

You have to realize that those of us who use Debian have grown to expect (and in fact Debian has promised) that anything we find in the main tree can be freely modified and distributed as long as we follow a few basic rules. If a piece of software or documentation doesn't meet the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidlines) then it simply doesn't belong in Debian/main.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[cjwatson]

Once we looked at it more carefully, it actually turned out to be not even as bad as that. The last count I had was down to 91 non-free documents and 93 documents with no licence (which are arguable, but they probably come under the general LDP Licence which is free). I haven't had a lot of time recently so the database isn't up to date with this.

Re:The "problems" went the other way around

[HiThere]

It's not even "Debian won't distribute...". They will just put it in a "non-free" directory. This warns people that they need to be aware that it has limits on what you can do with it that are different than the rest. And if they don't have the same permissions, then this is probably mandatory (as in, CYA).
.

GN

[Anonymous Coward]

I am TREULY your biggest fan, but what /.
needs is n0t a grammar natsi, but a an
spelling natsi. thank you

Example of free documentation?

[joestar]

Mandrake Linux manuals:
http://www.mandrake.com/en/doc/81/en/ref.html/fore word.html#LEGAL

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation[...]

TESTIFY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Testify!

Re:GPL - Intellectual Theft, and SNOTTING

[The WIPO Troll]

Section 1745(b)1(A)32 of the GNU Perversion License states:

Whosoever publishes source code under this license must also engage in the practice known as "Snotting" with Richard M. Stallman, and must also make their immediate family available to Mr. Stallman also for the purposes of "Snotting." Failure to allow Mr. Stallman to snot you and your family will result in the immediate revocation of this license, and you must submit to a "snotting" as performed by one of the Slashdot crew. Failure to that snotting will result in your death, most likely by a "juicy-douche" administered by Jon Katz.

It's true! I read it at -1 on Slashdot so it must be!

Actually..

[Anonymous Coward]

none of that is very funny at all, fag

other sites

[bcrowell]

• For free hosting of free-as-in-speech books, see Andamooka. They also allow you to give annotations and comments.
• For a catalog and reviews, see my site, The Assayer.
• Opencontent.org - licenses, and a directory of open-content works
• Internet Public Library
• Project Gutenberg
• ibiblio - an archive of free information
• On-Line Books Page and Book People mailing list - has an emphasis on old books that have fallen into the public domain
• Samizdat.com hosts a bunch of free books, plus lots of good articles and links
• Association des Bibliophiles Universels - hosts PD texts in French

Re:other sites

[solferino]

thanks for this valuable list - i'm disappointed that this comment didn't get modded up

I don't see the point...

[sasha328]

Another documentation project! So what? It is like all those new programming languages that crop up because the old one is "not good enough anymore", and the new one is supposed to replace it! This usually meant that people have an extra language to learn. Look at C++ and C, C# and JAVA, and I'm sure there are more. Creating something new does not make the old one (which works just fine, thank you) obsolete. I agree with a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24969&ci d=2712435">previous comment that all this bickering is counter productive. The best way to fix a problem is to "work" on it not start something new.

Sounds good; promote standards

[Spinality]

Despite some whiny comments below, this meta-project sounds useful and appropriate to me. I'd encourage serious contributors to give some attention to the issue of documentation standards, or (to make it less dictatorial) style guides. There are plenty of FAQ's, for example, that would have been better if the authors had samples and guidance -- so many times I've seen postings saying "I'm working on a new FAQ; here's a draft, any suggestions?" and finding that a simple template would have saved lots of time and effort.

So to you and your contributors: If you're going to support a metadocumentation effort, try to start by consolidating metadocuments, and (perhaps) providing a linkable source of common dox and linx that folks would probably like to reference.

Re:Sounds good; promote standards

[pongo000]

If I'm not mistaken, both LDP and OSWG support a framework of documentation standards. Guidance and samples are in abundance, if one takes the time to look. So apart from your argument in support of this "meta-project" simply making no sense in light of the facts, give all us whiners another good reaon why duplication of document submission and maintenance efforts will somehow be "useful and appropriate."

Re:Sounds good; promote standards

[Guylhem]

Thanks a lot for your support. Every volunteer is welcome. Currently I do not plan to consolidate metadocuments or dictate a consistent style.

We will just take whatever poeple are writing. Then the users will rate the documents àla slashdot moderation, so the best documents can emerge from the mass.

Then if we find some specific topic has no good document (say UUCP - I like my HOWTO but maybe people don't like it) we can commit ressources to produce that very document.

There is only one requirement for a document to enter the GWM - it will have to be available under a free license. The choice of the "free license" is yours. There are lots of guidelines already exisiting. If people come with strange homemade licenses (for ex. forbidding commercial redistribution) we may publish a list of existing compatible licenses and requirements for a license to be considered "free".

Re:Sounds good; promote standards

[Guylhem]

One last time - this is *not* duplication! I'm currently the LDP coordinator. I'm not doing that inside the LDP because I don't think that's the good place to do it.

The LDP already has a good catalog on gldp.org - I would like to provide the same service (and more) to other documentation.

That means cataloging. That means a meta project, unless you want everybody to join the LDP. Dont forget there're other projects out there (not a lot alas - and don't talk about the dead OSWG).

If I had pursued this project as a "LDP project" it may have been considered a kind of assimilation of the other projets. It would have introduced artificial competition and would have been redundant with other documentation projects.

A meta projects means everyone stays free, since it is not going to be in competition with anything. I prefer to go that way.

Guylhem
linuxdoc.org
gnu.org/doc

Re:Sounds good; promote standards

[Spinality]

So apart from your argument in support of this "meta-project" simply making no sense in light of the facts, give all us whiners another good reaon why duplication of document submission and maintenance efforts will somehow be "useful and appropriate." -- pongo000

Uh..see what Guylhem said (the parent comment) for the good reasons. :) There are indeed many bits of guidance and samples, if one takes the time to look...but as so often the case in open source communities, there is quite an incompatible abundance from which to choose. Moreover, many of these seem dated. I thought the idea of a consolidated free doc source outside (i.e. transcending) the LDP was reasonable (obviously avoiding duplication by maintaining current links to primary sources); and if one is doing this, some 'philosophy of documentation' seemed helpful.

Currently I do not plan to consolidate metadocuments or dictate a consistent style. -- Guylhem

I didn't mean to say you should dictate a style, and naturally your concept is to accept whatever is submitted. I'm suggesting that the SUBMITTERS might consider metadocumentation issues, particulary those submitters who are very experienced at documentation and technical writing, and might be able to serve as 'force multipliers' for less experienced writers.

Just to beat this to death: In my ideal vision of this resource, it would have (in addition to lots of technical dox in their open source glory) links to things like grammar principles, copyright law, ACM Computing Reviews, and copies of or references to documentation standards from various contexts. But useful compilations don't happen by accident; they're the result of editorial effort. So I was suggesting that experienced document specialists might be able to upgrade the expectations of the community through example.

Perhaps I'm all wet on this.

3 words

[Anonymous Coward]

doomed for failure.

Two words....

[the Epopt]

Wikipedia.

http://www.wikipedia.com if you're frightened of links.

2 words

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject

we should appreciate Debian

[argoff]

I wish people would renember how many time's we've all been screwed over by someone who seeminly out of generosity makes something free, or very easy to distribute - and then when we really need it they ream the screws to us like there's no tommorow. I can't see how anybody could blame Debian for wanting to be proactive just this once.

Re:we should appreciate Debian

[coyote-san]

The problem is that the "crisis" was totally manufactured by Debian itself. Let's agree, for sake of argument, that a large number of documents couldn't be released under the "main" section....

BFD. They could probably still be released under the "non-free" section. We aren't talking about documents that had no license, or were clearly commercial products, these are (from what I understand) mostly documents that predate the "Debian-approved" license they prefer. This isn't the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last time, and there's a well-defined section precisely for this "problem."

Finally, your argument lacks a certain critical symmetry. Why is the volunteer effort of Debian maintainers to be applauded, while the volunteer effort of authors (who arguably have a harder job since there are far fewer authors than Debian maintainers) of no consequence?

Re:we should appreciate Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been screwed by anyone recently except for Debian, who decided that they were going to create a crisis in the Linux camp.

Re:we should appreciate Debian

[nmos]

" The problem is that the "crisis" was totally manufactured by Debian itself."

I still don't see how this is true. The LDP maintainer simply pointed out to one of the Debian maintainers that many of the LDP docs didn't fit into Debian's own rules for what was allowed into Debian/main. IMHO the only thing that Debian can be blamed for here is not noticing the problem themselves.

"BFD. They could probably still be released under the "non-free" section. "

That's exactly what will happen.

"mostly documents that predate the "Debian-approved" license they prefer. "

And more specifically, docs that don't allow free modification and distribution.

Re:we should appreciate Debian

[dvdeug]

They could probably still be released under the "non-free" section.

And they are. What did you think we were doing? It's Debian's fault that someone writes about it on Slashdot?

these are (from what I understand) mostly documents that predate the "Debian-approved" license they prefer.

They're documents that, legally, we can't modify and/or sell. That's a problem.

the volunteer effort of authors [...] of no consequence?

There's a lot of effort in the world that's misdirected. A lot of people do things that are redundant, or pointless, in an active attempt to do good. If you write a document that can't be used by free software people, then you haven't helped the free software community.

there are far fewer authors than Debian maintainers

I sure hope not. Are there only a few hundred free software documentation authors in the world?

Re:we should appreciate Debian

[__past__]

Funny, when OpenBSD started their license auditing, everybody screamed.

Copyright is the root of all evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I think copyright needs to be done away with. It is an unnatural restriction imposed on something that is inherently not scarce once a single instance is produced. Yes, "information wants to be free" is old and sounds hopelessly naive to many, but it describes the nature of information much better than any concept of scarcity. There has got to be a better way to motivate people to create information than offering them control over it. Maybe there would be less noise that poses as information and more people would be willing to contribute. Freed from the hassle of dealing with legal aspects everyone could concentrate on the content without fearing that someone rips them off by selling "their" information.

Re:Copyright is the root of all evil

[KFW]

Observation the first
You state: "There has got to be a better way to motivate people to create information than offering them control over it." I'd be happy to hear whatever system you have to propose. Seems to me it is hard to motivate someone without providing a means of sustenance for self and family. This typically means money, which implies value, which implies scarcity, etc.

Observation the second
I've never figured out how the "information wants to be free" crowd also tends to be very privacy/crypto oriented and keep a straight face. Next time someone tells you very sincerely that "information wants to be free," agree with him enthusiastically, and suggest he start by posting his e-mail address, log-in usernames and passwords, and credit card/bank account numbers on the Internet. This is information, after all, and doesn't he want it to be free? Check for the person's response. Clearly such people too believe that only SOME information should be free. It's in defining what constitutes "SOME" that defines the difference between people. Don't let them fool you into thinking otherwise.

>K

Wikipedia

[javilon]

Maybe what is needed is a wikipedia for documentation. Usually programmers are not very good at documentation, and users find difficult to get into docbook and stuff.

Wikipedia have got about 20000 articles in just one year, some of them of very good quality.

If we were to give users the ability to do the documentation themselves, I bet they would use the oportunity.

The teaching from wikipedia is that you get good quality writing if enough people works on it. Something like code peer review.

Re:Wikipedia

[KevinDumpsCore]

> what is needed is a wikipedia

For the love of docs, NO!!!!! Wiki might be a great solution for Weblogs but it doesn't work for technical documentation.

> Usually programmers are not very good at documentation

This is a very unfair statement and a sweeping generalization. It reveals an anti-programmer bias.

> users find difficult to get into docbook and stuff. Users shouldn't have to use DocBook. Just give them the final rendered format. Let them send changes or additions as plain text paragraphs.

> If we were to give users the ability to do the documentation themselves, I bet they would use the oportunity.

Who owns the words? Who makes sure the information is accurate? What happens when the information in two places is contradictory? What about bored teen-agers wasting bandwidth with fart jokes? The on-line annotated PHP manual is good example of such madness.

You'd have the Tower of Babel. You need a central maintainer or editorial team to make sure to check spelling, grammar, and technical accuracy. They can also make sure everything is cohesive and has a consistent style. Otherwise, things will devolve into a confusing mess.

> The teaching from wikipedia is that you get good quality writing if enough people works on it. Something like code peer review.

Name me one successful project that blindly accepts all code patches/additions. Usually, someone submits their code to a maintainer who decides whether the code will be added. This is the way documentation should work also.

GNU/GPL is not FREE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Public Domain is FREE. The GPL is a restrictive legal license.

Does it need to be free?

[Master Of Ninja]

Really now, I've read some of the arguments here about freeing documentation, and im wondering who really will make the effort to create the docs for this project. I'm of the persuasion of making minimal docs and then allowing other companies to sell it as a service (or even as a "For Dummies" book). This way Linux could be viable and all the "windows heretics" could see the light of a free OS.

I mean making everything free would just make people homeless. And it would take up a lot of man hours. I think people should get the basics, or then look us newsgroups or whatever, or get a proper manual for the info. An example is the recent debate of QT vs Gtk on slashdot (can't find the link for some reason). People complain Gtk is really badly documented compared to QT. Well all that is needed is minimum documentation to work - companies should be encouraged to develop full documentation (and maybe tidy the source up). The work can be copyrighted and sold for all I care (can't think of disadvantages), with people getting jobs due to open-source. This should encourage others to take it more seriously.

developers vs. writers

[dollargonzo]

having done some technical writing myself, i now know the difference between software developers and technical writers. software developers make the software (DUH), but also know MORE than anyone else about what the project / software is about. however they usually know jack shit or close to nothing about writing and eloquent expression. because of this, they hire technical writers. the problem is the fact that technical writers write better (DUH, again), but also usually dont know THAT much about what they are writing, and the developers end up unsatisfied with the result.

writers should work in conjunction with software developers to document their work. yuo cant have a bunch of guys contribute to the cause...

finally, developers usually find the docs the MOST ANNOYING part of the process of completing their project / producing their software. therefore...we can't really reach a golden mean...and creating an organization of sorts to document things is NOT incredibly useful, IMHO.

however, the rating system might remedy this. the developers might not be pleased and be too lazy to write their own docs, but can write the written stuff.

eh, whatever: hate to judge prematurely...so good luck guys!

QED

There's a difference

[Starship Trooper]

Companies are acclimated to the closed-source view, and bother the producers and consumers of software tools are usually willing to bargain or compromise for special licencing provisions and/or rights to source code. The average open-source hacker is far more idealistic, and will ravenously stick to his choice of licence (just look at all the GPL vs. BSD flamewars if you don't believe me).

There is also the trouble of actually finding the authors who hold the copyright to the code; there is a TON of old, unmaintained software that has outdated e-mail addresses and no other way of contacting the author. And for large collaborative projects like Linux, copyright is split between the thousands of contributors that have added to the project over its lifespan. A corporation provides a single, monolithic entity to approach for licencing; an open-source project provides an unkempt mishmash of hundreds of hard-to-find developers with different ideals and personalities; your average company isn't going to bother rectifying licence terms with that many different, unpredictable people.

Re:There's a difference

[AxelBoldt]

A corporation provides a single, monolithic entity to approach for licencing; an open-source project provides an unkempt mishmash of hundreds of hard-to-find developers with different ideals and personalities; your average company isn't going to bother rectifying licence terms with that many different, unpredictable people.

And what exactly is the problem with that? Let them do their things their outdated ways, who cares? Tell you what: most of the corporations who currently think they're so hot will be bankrupt ten years from now; there is no question that free software will still be around. Their model is wrong, not ours.

Lame topic alert!

[coupland]

I was watching the news a few years ago and some guy in India had lit himself on fire to protest the Miss Universe pageant. Sorry bastard, didn't know the difference between a worth cause and a silly one.

Surely the fate of the Brazilian dung beetle is more important than this cause. Let's leave the definition of "free" and Free documentation to a later generation who will hopefully have realized what a ridiculous topic this is...

Searching for problems where there are none

[Starship Trooper]

Here we have a license problem (you read the Debian story did you? Hmm? Yes I know that's slashdot :-) I didn't make it up. It is really a problem. Debian was going to move most of the LDP documents out of its main tree. We did everything in a hurry and it's now (mostly) fixed. But *prevention* is better - I'd rather have avoided this problem altogether!

The point I was trying to make is that this sort of thing shouldn't be a fucking problem in the first place. Debian has obviously survived for the past five years without nagging the LDP to make silly little fixes to their licences; it's positively atrocious of them to go "Change your licence or we're dumping your documentation; you have 48 hours to decide". A problem as pointless and minuscule as this should not be a big enough deal to make the Slashdot frontpage twice, nor should it require what amounts to an ultimatum to solve.

Also, licences don't sue people. I said this in my parent post, but it must be reiterated. An open-source licence is not so much a diction of what can and can't be done with the code as it is a statement of the author's intentions. I seriously doubt the Linux Documentation Project is going to call the Debian Linux distribution on some technicality of the GPL or DFSG. What could have been solved peacefully in a relatively quiet way by friendly parties shouldn't explode into an ultimatum situation and the discarding of reams of perfectly good manuals and HOWTOs only to be rewritten half-assed.

Re:Searching for problems where there are none

[Guylhem]

Currently, I receive a message every day from the LDP updates scripts. Most of the messages are about "relicensed documentation". So yes, it worked and the problem is being solved.

But I must agree with you, we did it the bad way. Ideally, Debian wouldn't have had a problem with the LDPL, the LDP would have been very happy with it and it would be such a perfect world.

But it isn't. So this time, even if is is unlikeley, I want to be sure that documentation license problems won't ever happen again. That's whay the GWM is about. We are just going to *catalog* the documents and *say* what license covers them.

No big deal. No ultimatum. If you are making your homemade non-GNU linux "No GNU No GPL" distro (good luck finding a kernel and compilator) you can discard the documents released under the GPL just by checking them on our website. Same if you don't like the BSD license or any other license.

We will just let you know which licenses are covering which documentation. It is just going to be a service, not an obligation. If you just don't care about licenses, don't check. Just consider the GWM as a "one stop" for free software documentation, from LDP to Gnome.

Re:Searching for problems where there are none

[cjwatson]

FYI, Debian doesn't have a problem with the LDPL as it currently stands. The old LDPL didn't allow modification, so it was non-free, but the new one is fine by us (for whatever that's worth).

I have a horrible feeling that a lot of the problems over the last few weeks stem from over-reactions and not enough communication on everybody's part ... I've been keeping David Merrill up to date, but perhaps not everybody else.

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�...

[AxelBoldt]

the "outdated" corporate model has proven to make money now.


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.

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.

Corporate backing hasn't helped free software one bit. Compare the contributions of Redhat or IBM to the contributions of the KDE project. Redhat stinks of money and still can't produce anything of significance. The real stuff is happening elsewhere. It's the enthusiasm of the hackers. Redhat goes bust today, Alan Cox will find some other job, the whole story is forgotten the day after tomorrow and everything goes on exactly as before. And if Alan loses interest, there are ten bright young hackers eager to take his place.

Free software has grown long before the suits found it, and will continue to grow long after the suits have forgotten it. You don't need money to induce people to do what they want to do anyway.

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.

Re:Ah, le na�vet�...

[__past__]

While I can appreciate your idealism, the "outdated" corporate model has proven to make money now.

While I can appreciate your simplemindedness, the "idealistic" free model has proven to make better software now.

Re:Ah, le na�vet�...

[SkepTech]

I find it appalling that people are now referring to Apple as an 'open source company.' They have 'opened the source' to the lowest layer of MacOS 10, and a small number of token products.

Apple Computer is historically one of the most closed companies in the PC market. That hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is that they almost shut down because they couldn't put out the Next Generation OS they needed without borrowing one from Open Source to lay their proprietary closed layer onto.

On the general issue of Free Documentation, it strikes me that one of the carrots used to tempt software developers to release their code as OS was that they would get their renumeration from other means, i.e. support and documentation. Now we're saying 'give us the docs for free too.'

That's a real problem. I guess we're all supposed to get endowments at MIT to pay the rent for our sleeping rooms off campus.

Re:Ah, le na�vet�...

[SComps]

Redhat stinks of money and still can't produce anything of significance. The real stuff is happening elsewhere.


While RH may not be producing any free software of significance, they *are* getting linux out into the world and into the hands of a lot of new people every single day. Without users all you nice freebie coders would only be able give your stuff to anyone other than another coder. Now maybe your version of world domination is "us instead of them" -- I don't know. In the end users are far more significant than you guys give them credt.

Re:Ah, le na�vet�...

[AxelBoldt]

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


Show me one compiler that's better documented than gcc, and then we talk. Show me one web server that is more complete than apache, and then we talk.

Why else do KDE and GNOME look more or less like wholesale ripoffs of CDE, Windows, and MacOS?

Because if your target is end users, you need to avoid all surprises. That's why CDE, Windows and MacOS look like ripoffs of each other in the first place. There are plenty of innovative interfaces in the free software world, much more than corporations ever invented with all their R&D money.

Why are there no free *games* written on top of the Crystal Space engine?

Why are there no free books, no free music, no free movies? Don't ask me, ask your friends the corporations. Are hackers supposed to solve all problems in the world?

And your claim that operating systems don't need design, but graphical interfaces do, is ridiculous. What do you think how much R&D money Microsoft burned on the Windows NT kernel? Linux did the same, five years earlier, with no budget.

sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

why do you idiots have to make everything so complicated? i'll stick to the MUCH simpler Microsoft Windows.

Coders Must Document Their Own Work

[KidSock]

Whomever writes the code should document it. Anyone else will likely produce something that is inadequate. Only the developer who wrote the code truely understands the work right down to it's semicolons. Developers always think there code is very self explainatory but trust me when I tell you that other developers are not interested in looking at your code. This is because it's either crappy code or it's potentially nicer than something they would write but the most likely scenario is that the just want to know how to use it and move on with their own code.

Please do not obsess over organization and presentation. Users will only withstand a very basic hierarchial organzation. Just start vi, insert the standard <html> boiler plate, and start typeing. Use lots of contextual inline hyperlinks to sections of LXR'd code, hyerlinked specs, other topic documents, and related sites. Don't make people dig for this stuff. Yes, lead them by the hand. Only the largest projects need a full blown index. Have one page of intro and a page for each topic. If you introduce a new major feature or there's an issue just write up a page of html on it and add a link to it in the main page. Use lot's of lists and tables. They provide good landmarks and organize info nicely.

Most importantly just get the information out of your head so people can use it. Spending one day a week on writing up a page on some topic will do wonders for your project. There are three reasons for this. The first is simply that users will know how to use your code which is obviously a prerequasite to actually using it. Second you will understand your code better and likey become keener to it's strengths and faults in the process. If you find yourself evading a particular topic then that's the topic you should explore. Don't leave that neusance dangling over your shoulder or it will take the fun out of your work. And it might very well be an artifact of an issue with the code or application. Third, colleagues and users will ask fewer questions and be able to contribute intellegently to the discussions and sumit useful problem reports.

Documentation is so very important, your code is virtually useless to anyone except you if you don't. Finally, if you spell as well as I do, use a spell checker ;-P

Re:Coders Must Document Their Own Work

[SCHecklerX]

The problem with this is it takes MUCH LONGER to write the documentation than it does to write the original software!!

I have a lot of little utilities, probably very useful to the public, that I've written for myself here, but to release them to the public would take a lot of time in code cleanup and documentation that I simply do not have.

I've tried to release some of the better stuff, but documenting and making things not crash and be secure is a very time-consuming and boring task.

GNU = trouble

[Starship Trooper]

All right, I'm sure your motivations are pure and all, but the fact that you're doing this under the GNU name is simply bound to get Stallman and his anal-retentive ways tangled into this mess. I have nothing against the GPL or the BSD licence (though I find BSD to be a tad too free, if you know what I mean), but GNU projects have a history of GPL bigotry and "our way or the highway" elitism which has caused no end of grief for many open-source projects (KDE, anyone?) and turned away many parties interested in Linux. From the poorly-written Slashdot article, I got the impression you were in the business of replacing non-compliant documentation, not merely cataloguing it as you say you are doing.

Re:GNU = trouble

[Guylhem]

I think 90% of the work will be cataloging. But If I feed some truely excellent book with chapter1 (GPL) chapter 2 (BSD), chapter 3 (non free stuff, like no commercial redistribution, no reprinting) yes I think *that one( would deserve a rewrite if the overall book is a sucess with the users.

That should not happen too ofter, but it's a possibility. In that case rewriting would help. Rewriting will require time, effort and maybe money, so only a handful of documents may deserve that.

BTW I don't think I have an history of elitism at the LDP. I did accept and thanked every contributor. I will try to do the same with GNU documentation. They're not bigot, they just sometimes too firmly believe in free software.

God I'm loosing too much time trying to explain my poorly written article. Sorry if I was not clear enough I will have more information on the website ASAP. Anyway if you like the idea, feel free to email me privately. Every volunteer means one more chance of success. I really want to do something good for free software documentation.

The true nature of the open source movement...

[Anonymous Coward]

...seems to be more a bunch of armchair lawyers than technologists or software engineers. Jesus about 90% of the stories on Slashdot are lame "Wah! Blah blah broke the GPL!" or other such tripe. Code and get over it for crying out loud you bunch of sissies.

Linux Documentation Project

[PatJensen]

I found this topic to be quite interesting. As a long time UNIX and Linux user - I mean pre-RedHat and pre-GUI installs, I installed distributions like MCC, SLS and Slackware. At that time, we had a bunch of HOWTOs, which by the time they were written were obsolete. Some of these documents were varied in terms of usefulness, accuracy or depth. Documents like an IP firewall HOWTO was worthless once it was written because it didn't cover all the latest bugs and hacks, and the command line options no longer worked.

Documentation has since gotten better with innovations like the LDP, enabling developers and writers to submit and critique documentation but the fact of the matter is, we still need to concentrate on getting useful, readable, concise and comphrensive documentation on individual components. It still is hard to find the latest PCMCIA setup instructions.

I am not sure that fighting over what is free & non-free is necessarily the best thing. Although it is great to see the latest FreeBSD and Linux book sets at Barnes and Noble and Amazon - I think the community still has a ways to go in developing "useable" documentation. What are your thoughts?

-Pat

Do developers want help in this area?

[guisar]

Do developers really want help in this area? Would they appreciate documentation developed for their code (I mean end user documentation, not architectual or maintenance documentation). If so, why don't I normally see such a request in the code I use or on the banner of the application? I'm just wondering if people think developers would appreciate this or be put out by a suggestion or submittal.

Only one week left...

[mirwor]

...and finaly I know what I want for christmas.

other Debian oddities

[Enahs]

apparently the package maintainer is futzing around with the packages in a way that will violate Apache's licensing scheme, so rather than giving the package maintainer a good kick in the ass (which sounds like the right thing to do ;-) the package is being moved to Non-Free.

Hrm. Package maintainer mucks around; software gets stigma of being Non-Free. Anyone else a little concerned about that?

Re:other Debian oddities

[dvdeug]

I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, but part of the point of Free Software is that you can futz around with it. If you can't futz around with it, and redistribute it, then it's not Free Software.

Re:other Debian oddities

[cjwatson]

I don't know where you got this from, but you're completely misinformed if you heard that the Apache packages are being moved to non-free. Although there are some oddities with the way Apache is packaged in Debian, the approach we took was to actually talk to the Apache people (shock! horror!), and to determine that this wasn't going to be a problem in practice.

It's the armchair developers who panic. The real developers talk to people and try to get things sorted out.

faqomatic.sourceforge.net

[aaron_pet]

Faq-O-Matic is an attempt to deal with some of these problems. Look at the idea... not the ugly colors in the frames. btw 63.96.88.170/halt/ is my attempt at an open source document.

Re:faqomatic.sourceforge.net

[SComps]

Faq-O-Matic [sourceforge.net] is an attempt to deal with some of these problems. Look at the idea... not the ugly colors in the frames. btw 63.96.88.170/halt/ [63.96.88.170] is my attempt at an open source document.

Lord! I looked at this twice and had to click on the actual link before I realized it didn't say FAG-O-Matic. Got my interest AND attention *sedutive wink*

Did you ever hear about techical writers?

[jotaeleemeese]

No? Bad. IN the "Real World[tm]" there are people that make a living of documenting the mes^H^H^Hprograms other people leave behind.

Re:Did you ever hear about techical writers?

[KidSock]

...there are people that make a living of documenting the mes^H^H^Hprograms other people leave behind.

Sure, and more often than not the result is inferior compared to what the developer could have done in the time it took out of his or her time to explain to the technical write what the technical writer should write. A much better scenario (ideal really) is for the developer to write some raw, perhaps crude, but complete documentation minus API references, tables, illustrations, and similar. That will greatly accelerate the technical writers job of organizing and presenting the information more formally.

And remember we're talking about Free documentation here. A technical writer who was good enough to interpret someone elses code would probably write code themselves instead because they have a choice.

Re:Did you ever hear about techical writers?

[HiThere]

Being a technical writer is a separate skill from being a programmer. Seriously. Some really good programmers are decent technical writers, a very few are good. Many are terrible.

It is usually the case that for a small utility, less than a few pages of documentation will allow people to use it well. The man pages are examples of this. But they are also an example of the limitations of this approach. Sometimes I come to the end of a man page, and find myself asking "What does this do? And why would I ever want to do it?" (This usually happens when I'm looking up something I've run across in a shell script that I'm trying to figure out.) So the man page would tell me how to format the command to run without error. But didn't help me understand the script.

Now, I admit that it is rare for a man page to be quite that bad, but few of them are pleasant to read. You need to know ahead of time what you are looking for. And even then they can be a bit cryptic.

Well, man pages aren't intended to be full documentation, but did you ever read the old CP/M manuals? Compare those with the old IBM manuals and you get an idea of just how important a good technical writer is. The IBM manuals were intended to be references, but they were actually good enough to learn from (if you were patient). The CP/M manuals were difficult to read even if you knew exactly what you were looking for. But they were BOTH good examples of careful, accurate, technical documentation. And technically there wasn't much to choose from between them.
.

stomp out anything that starts with LINUX?

[CresentCityRon]

I feel that certain people don't like the LDP because its the LDP and not the GNU/LDP. So they want to reinvent the whole thing and "de" credit those that worked on the LDP.

Inner politics will hurt these projects more than anything Microsoft could do. Politics erode the sense of giving and being part of something larger. Which is an aspect of why people give freely of their time.

Not always

[Anonymous Coward]

*Some* programmers are poor writers. Others may enjoy writing. However, good programmers often get paid twice what a competent technical author gets; hence it is more efficient use of company resources to get the technical author to do time-consuming editing.

I think writing manuals should be a collaborative project between the programmers, the author and possibly a graphics designer, with each contributing to the documentation as they are suited.

could someone moderate cjwatson's parent post up?

[Error27]

He's the debian maintainer in charge of the doc-linux package.

(Not the person who reported the problem or made the decision to put the docs in non-free, but the guy who gets to go through and fix it.)

Don't we already have this solution?

[eclectric]

I brought this up last week when we were discussing new international copyright laws and was wondering if there was a way to protect the copyright on my work while still being able to make it freely available...

The solution presented was

Open Content - which seems to have some use in the academic fields.

Of course, when I check my link, the site is down, which probably means it's been checked and slashdotted already.

However, I do see some limitations with the opencontent project, and seeing a generalized GNU license for written works would be nice.

Re:Don't we already have this solution?

[dilger]

I've followed OpenContent for some time, and the site goes up and down a lot. It's not just the Slashdot effect

OpenContent has two slightly different licenses. I've emailed the person who manages OC and asked him to clarify the difference between them, or the rationale for two licenses, but I've never heard back.

cbd.

'Free' is ambiguous

[gidds]

...free (as "libre" or "freedom")...

The term `free' causes so much confusion these days... How about replacing it with `unrestricted' (for free-as-in-speech) and `gratis' or `no-cost' (for free-as-in-beer)?

Stop creating silly projects

[bigjocker]

... and start writing some docs. This is one of the main OSS problems, go to sourceforge and see how many projects are there, we are always reinventing the weel (look at kde/gnome), and instead of creating a good product we focus on "showing what i can do".
\
This is the same thing as with documentation, why do we need another documentation project?? if anybody wants to contribute there are plenty of things to do, i dont think the priority is "another great project" to provide access to the docs that havent even
been finished.

How about "Overview" and "Responsibility?"

[Thag]

Wikipedia seems to favor volume over accuracy. The pages I looked at all tended to display the writer's agendas fairly plainly. Some are very misleading, either by omission, or by stating opinions as facts.

Writing factual articles is difficult. It requires research and responsibility on the part of the writer, and dedicated, professional peer review from above to weed out the writer's personal agendas, or point out missing information that was overlooked. That's what you get when you look at a dictionary, or a professional encyclopedia, and I just don't see it there in Wikipedia.

It's not enough to have lots of people's opinions on a subject, or only some of the facts, or a collection of truths and untruths. If a source of information isn't dependable, it's useless to me.

Jon Acheson

No, first kill info, then fix man pages

[mccrew]

And while we are at it, let's get rid of the annoying, arrogant info pages.

How many times have you done
man somecommand
only to be scolded that this man page is begrudgingly provided to you as a "courtesy," and that to get the full documentation, you have to learn someone's nonstandard, failed attempt at hypertext documentation.

Like it or not, 'man' is the standard for Unix documentation.

Like it or not, HTML is the standard for linked documents.

...

[pinkNoise]

This was a very interesting and thoughtfull post about document templates, but my browser ate it. Feel free to imagine something nice here.

Free ain't

[SimCash]

Let's use "information workers" to describe writers, content providers, programmers, musicians, and all those who need good copyright to get income. As copy technology improves these information workers will realize less and less income from their work, which means that they will work more secretively in an effort to make a big sale on their initial debut, sort of like the old patronage model. Eventually they may only realize income from "tip jars", as they become the information-space equivalent of the street musician with his open violin case collecting stipends from passers by.

In the limit, information workers become wards of the state, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, (IS Division), where they will compete with various performance artists and virus writers who have successfully submitted grant requests to get NEA(ISD) handouts. They ride on the goodwill of real workers who create goods and services that cannot easily be duplicated or automated - which in the world of robotics means the people who braid hair and the ones who change diapers (the so called "heads or tails faction"). Farmers, miners, assembly line workers and other traditional value creaters (as opposed to VARs like grocers etc.) eventually disappear as well, as their businesses succumb to the ability of the average person to gain access to their goods under the guise of "freedom". The Freedom of Access Act of 2034 evicerates their ability to protect their produce against people who successfully point out in courts that the locks on these facilities are easily hacked, and therefore should not be allowed to keep out the people who need or want access.