Slashdot Mirror
Help Liberate the Debian Administrator's Handbook
First time accepted submitter buxy writes "Roland Mas and me [Raphael Hertzog] are the authors of a French Debian bestseller. We want to translate this book into English and publish it under a license compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. That would be the first free and up-to-date book about Debian that can be integrated into Debian. But we need your support to make this happen. Pledge some money [toward the translation effort] and get a copy of the book once it's done! As a special bonus, you can alternatively support the project and have about 12% of the donated money given back to the Debian project."
Will the French version tell me to build a great line of firewalls that are easily circumvented by going through a router in Belgium?
I'm not really understanding why it's going to take 15,000 euro.
It's a translation, not a new work. Why not piecemeal it out to like-minded French / English speakers, and then self publish or simply post a torrent of the file (free as in...FREE)?
You know, "community effort"?
By the way, 15,000 euro is (today) about 20,000 $.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Im waiting for someone to come up with 'cover expenses' idea. ie, like, lets say you are someone who is undertaking a free project or giving your music away for free. (like this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9-esIM2CY ).
you come up with a website, and you post your monthly expenses as they come up. and people donate. people know what they are donating to, and people actually see that they are covering your ass. and your monthly expenses and living gets covered. and you can even come up with small or big projects you want to undertake and people will fund it if they want, as much as they want.
transparent, trustworthy, interactive, meaningful.
Read radical news here
It's funny. When Taco was here, I would read at least 3 posts a day directed to Taco about how much he sucked for what he was posting. Now i read at least that many more each day wishing he'd come back. Fickle bunch aren't we? Or is this a case of not loving what you've got until it's gone? Smile.
We show geeks how to get their dream girl at EyesOfOdessa.com
I'd love to know who the fuck modded that insightful.
"We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am a native English speaker who speaks and writes fluent French. I have no interest in helping with the translation of someone else's copywritten work. If it was available under a free documentation license, I would gladly contribute and commit to translating two chapters. It just looks like a gimmicky cash grab.
I'd love to know who the fuck modded that interesting.
Did you miss the part of the plan where we want to publish it under a free license? That said you're right. I truly hope the sales of paper copies will support my Debian work (dpkg maintenance among other things) once the book is available world-wide.
You do realize that there are millions upon millions of qualified individuals available to assist with such an effort, right?
And you do realize that this is the version 2 of the book, written for Squeeze, and that Raphael had the experience of the Lenny version (where he didn't find volunteers)?
You do realize that there are millions upon millions of qualified individuals available to assist with such an effort, right? And probably on the order of between tens and hundreds of thousands of professional translators out there too, right?
You'd be surprised.
Okay, you need someone who is sufficiently fluent in French and English that they can put together a half-decent translation. Fair enough. I'd agree that there's no shortage of translators.
Really, you need someone who's also sufficiently comfortable with Linux that they can be trusted to ensure that as few errors as possible slip in during the translation process. To put it into context, many publishers paying professionals have difficulty with this - you'd be amazed how many French programmers would much prefer to use the original English version of a reference book for exactly that reason; this reduces the pool of qualified people quite considerably straight away.
Now you need someone who has the time to dedicate to that, the patience to deal with the never-ending stream of questions and criticism that "this paragraph isn't very clear" and the inclination to do all that free of charge.
I reckon it'd be just as easy to find €15,000.
what is the problem with being paid ?
Free software does not means that it is free to produce, a payment upfront for feature or a documentation that you need, it not a bad use of money even if that benefit everyone. I won't give as I read french and I do not use Debian but should I have to administer or program for a Debian system, I would not hesitate to fill a procurement (if is it under 10000$ as over this the paperwork gets hellish) form to contract that particular feature.
Most of the Kernel guys are paid from some corp, most of the Ubuntu guys are paid by canonical, some Debian guys use to be paid by the severely reduced FT R&D lab and other French corp. So why would it be bad for that particular individual to be paid by the peoples who will benefit from his important work on dpkg and the documentation ?
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected