Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Book a Collective Effort
Hairy1 writes "The New Zealand Open Source Society has begun a project to write a book to put the case for open source use in business and government. There is a need for a book which clearly puts the case for using open source, and provides a clear migration plan. Already five authors and several reviewers have stepped forward to commit time to writing the book. However, other authors and reviewers would be welcome to join the project."
..... is going to be to get all those CEO/CFO/CTO types to actually read something like this.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
"but not the typical ebook. we should have an open source reader which can be used to create books that are more compatible in content. Use this as a starting point to 'ram the message home'"
We already have two. They're called ASCII and HTML.
I don't want to sound like a troll or feed them but, wouldn't it be better if there was one single author for this? A book like this would need to capsure the feeling of readers therefore a collective attempt will sound more "scientific" and boring.
A paper or collecion of papers or a large recruition network sounds better as a collective work, but for a single book I believe a single author would do better, solid work
Open source could really use better marketing.
On the topic of desktop software was CRM (customer relations management) intentially left off the list or just overlooked. Time management is probably the second biggest killer app for businesses next to spreadsheets. Some open source alternatives are available like compier
I don't know about others, but I am partial to printed books. And in this situation, I would think it would be advantageous to have a hard copy. Imagine this exchange:
In the end, I'd rather just spend $30 to pick up a copy of the book and let him read it. Besides, I don't mind spending money on books that support and advocate open source products - even if I never directly contribute to the project(s) involved, I have provided a small amount of monetary incentive for the authors (and publishers) to provide more books and/or resources for the open source community. It's worth it, IMHO.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Many of you are making it sound as if it is a software project. Everyone puts in how it should work and then majority rules. Sadly, that is how it may turn out.
What open source needs is MARKETING. It is no longer whether or not its better or not, its the fact that not enough decision makers understand what OSS really is. We often focus too much on factual representation, and not enough on presentation.
Put it in whatever format the market dictates, write it to be easy to read by the persons you want to read it. Give examples that apply to their situation. This means that people that are already OSS advocates will probably not like the book, which is fine. The goal, it appears, is NOT to reaffirm what hackers think, its to expose decision makers to an alternative to proprietary systems where licensing can change with every necessary update.
If you and I love it, then its probably not written very well for its intended market.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
This is a nice idea. These days I find myself relying more and more heavily on PDFs, because (1) electronic searching is a huge win, (2) lots fit on my laptop's hard disk, and (3) if I really want a paper copy, I can print it, or better yet, I can copy a small range of pages (which I do pretty often).
PDF is good for that, and pdflatex is wonderful, but Acroread isn't open-source. Adobe could decide to change the format some day, or get rid of the free Acroread download, etc. Something functionally equivalent to Acroread, but as open source, would be a huge win.
The big thing to do is to select or define the file format. Then it will be relatively straightforward to write progressively better readers. The file format should allow capabilities that may not be implemented in early versions of the reader, but would be desirable in the longer term.
There are "Unix philosophy" arguments to be made for using a ASCII-ish file format, or maybe a file format that's a gzip of an ASCII format. That would give lots of opportunities to write "baby readers" (e.g. text only) or do handy text-processing hacks (sed, awk, grep...).
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Look, HTML and ASCII, are standards. And have bodies that govern them. They are free to use and are cross platform compatible because of standards.
ASCII is probably the oldest and most standard spec in the computer world(I am saying probably cause I do not really know, and if i say it is the oldest i will get the pundits here with thier Junior exyclopedia guide to the universe saying i am wrong).
Oh, yeah and ASCII is gonna change all that much. Must be some good hydroponic.
HTML has matured and can be parsed by all systems.
Perfect cross platform.
Why reinvent the wheel?
And what the hell? Don't use ASCII or HTML because non open OS's use them? WTF? Really, man that is just silly. I am a unix and windows guy. Dont see anything wrong with either on any platform.
This is the problem with most of the community. If it ain't open dont use it. But this is just so fucking stupid.
Should we rip all use of ASCII and HTML out of Linux cause Windows ans Apple use them? I mean that is what you are saying. Every computer since the dawn of time has used ASCII(mention Babbage and I will bitch slap you). Non open OS's use TCPIP. Shit rip that outta there. WAIT, IEEE governs how electrons/light flow across any type of medium, FUCK, we gotta throw that out too, cause non OSS systems use cables, hard drives, electricity.
We need standards, we do not need to throw up another project on source forge everyime someone gets a wild hair.
And really this is not even an OSS arguement.
ASCII and HTML would be the best choice because of cross platform.
We do not need a format when one exits. Easy enough.
MAN got me going on a sunday.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The intended audience don't read ebooks, they read paper books. Print quality is a must.
ASCII doesn't have formatting. The only people who would suggest ASCII are programmers who don't understand their audience.
HTML doesn't look good in print (yes yes, there's print CSS, but the spec allows too many variances to for print-quality rendering)
Arguing about output formats is missing the point. You don't write a book in HTML or ASCII. You write it in Docbook or LyX and then from this high-level format you have produce many lower-level formats such as HTML or ASCII or VoiceXML or XHTML 2 or E-book/PDF (via XSL-FO). Ask them what format they want it in and produce it on the fly for all I care - it's no hassle.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I think a better thing might be a whole website. Include on it the whitepaper and the book - prominantly (front page). But it also would allow the creation of other kinds of information for people interested in the topic: forums (like slashdot) for discussing current issues in the area, announcements (like freshmeat) for software of interest, mailing lists and so on. The site would need to be carefully moderated and edited or it could get out of control quickly with trolls and flamewars. This also allows for people to post articles saying open source does not work - this provides a good balance for the advocates. Such criticism and counter-opinions are important to hear (see the whole thread on Java at Sun).
On a related note though, there could be a fun chance for open source. The state of Oregon recently voted to not raise taxes - thus putting the government in a serious budget crunch. They're already laying off state police and there are threats/promises of more to come.
But if Oregon moved most of its office desktops to open source alternatives the savings could be pretty high. I don't know how many computers the state buys each year for office use, but the software costs - OS + Office + other software - probably adds up pretty quickly. That doesn't count upgrades which will add up to a bit more. I know that as part of the university system we only got a discount (hardware or software) if we bought through the right sources - and most machines came with Windows and Office pre-installed so the discounts didn't always apply on first purchase.