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FSF offers $20k for Gnome documentation
Booker sent us a message
from [RMS] found on the Gnome mailing list where he
says "The FSF would gladly pay someone $20k for the rights to
a well-written and comprehensive GNOME programming manual.
We would then publish as free documentation--free as in
freedom, of course. We would sell copies in bookstores, just
as these companies do, just as we do for our existing
manuals."
I have had the hardest time configuring GNOME because there simply is no Manual to RTFM!!
Whoever gets to do this is gunna have a ball. There is so much to gnome that it would take a long time to write this whole thing. Well atleast they will get money out of it! NaTaS Click here for my Civ:CTP news page...and click here for my MythII news page. BTW these are all games being ported by Lokigames!
...what all would "comprehensive" include? Are we talking language indepenance, or having to cover details of C -vs- PerkGTK -vs- python -vs- c++, etc? Guidelines would be good; considering how much cash is at stake, I'd guess that there'll be more than a few interested parties. Best not to upset them by changing the rules halfway through the game, and possibly poisoning them against doing more free documentation.
Is _that_ where our donations end up? Has there been any public discussion amongst FSF members/supporters before making such a generous offer?
As an actual tech writer, this seems appealing to me, but:
. . . what would such a manual include?
I'm guessing that the FSF won't "impose" strict guidelines, so here's an opportunity for the OSS community to strike again:
What would you folks, as the target audience, like to see in a "comprehensive" GNOME book? C'mon, lay your requirements on the table!
Nah, RMS often sends from santafe.edu.
It's real.
They're willing to pay a rather paltry sum ($20K for such a major project is too little) so that they can then attempt to foreclose the market for creative works on which legitimate authors might make money. It appears that they've expanded the scope of RMS's vendetta against authors and inventors who would like to be compensated for their work from software to books.
I hope that no author is shortsighted enough to be suckered into doing this.
--Brett Glass
How can FSF afford such expenditures? Is it from donations? Is this money well spent?
Most of the big, "official" FSF projects (like GCC and GNU Emacs) require contributors to assign the copyright of any modifications to the FSF before they will integrate the patches into the main source tree. This is not just GPL'ing the changes; it's actually making the FSF the full-bore full-stop copyright holder of the code and letting them GPL the whole. The theory is that if the FSF is the legal copyright holder for the whole thing, then they have better legal standing if they need to go after violators of the GPL.
This is one of the reasons that Xemacs split off from GNU Emacs; there were people who were willing to make substantial code changes and GPL them, but were either unwilling or unable to assign ownership to the FSF.
I would imagine that the FSF would want to be the legal copyright holder for the free GNOME documentation. (The contract would likely stipulate that the copyright on the docs are assigned to the FSF and that the FSF will set it free.)
Working for the FSF and their Führer is not an enjoyable experience. You'd be better advised to write the book for O'Reilly instead.
I may be wrong, but the way I read it. The reason the FSF can pay for this is because they are going to be expecting money to be made off of it. According to the letter, approximately $20K will be made in sales. This will cover the payment that the FSF made to the writer. I don't think that a lot of FSF donation money is going to go into this one. RTFMail...
Sheesh, nobody's killing anything.
Like KDE? Great! Use it!
Don't like KDE? Fine, use Gnome.
relax.
It's just like open source software: anyone can print the book, no one gets proceeds unless the publisher makes donations.
I'm not sure what you're talking about... the publisher can charge whatever they wish for sales of the book, and can distribute royalties as they see fit, or as stipulated in the contract with the author. Where do you get the idea that the publisher must donate something to somebody?
You lose :-)
Hm, just re-read your post - I get it. If a third-party publisher picks up the book, the author doesn't get a cent unless a donation is made. I see... your dry humor about Microsoft confused me. :-) Wouldn't it be possible, though, for a publisher to agree to publish something that is GPL'd, and even give the author a royalty on each copy that *that* publisher sold?
Yes, it appears that Miguel and the Gnome team need some .....
documentation so they can understand all this code they've
been working on. But that hasn't stopped them so far
Be sure to provide a translation in Spanish.
Gee, pay some schmuck $20K and keep the 60 - 80K the book generates in royalties for yourself. Now there is a deal. Why not just submit a proposal to O'Reilly, and keep the cash and the copyright?
Right - only a dummie would use Gnome.
20K is almost certainly more than an author
would get from royalties. A Gnome book isn't
going to generate massive sales.
O'Reilley is paying the salary of Larry Wall because this is good for O'Reilley Inc. Obvious, isn't? Their goal in to make money from free-software. It is not the other way around, which is: make money for free-software.
I do not know about FSF, but I am getting desperate about documentation. This is a good deal for consumers. Instead of me having to spend $30 for each and every computer book, I would much rather make a $20 donation to FSF and download ALL my computer books from a website. If there is enough demand, this is destined to happen, there is nothing to stop it.
One can talk without fear of retribution. AC's can be a very useful thing because it allows people to say things they would be afraid to say otherwise.
The problem you mention with understanding communism is that many equate the USSR with communism. Communism is an economic system in which you take what you need and give to the greatest possible extent and according to this premise RMS is a communist.- --
Stay tuned i am working on a paper on this subject.
-----------------------------------------------
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx
Great. Another Linux related project that won't ever get completed.
It should reach version 0.66b before the writers get bored. Sometime around 2004 I'll estimate...
I would guess the FSF makes a substantial portion of it's money through sale of CDs and docs like this one. This might cover itself, or even give money back to the FSF.
You can't just get a cheezy tech writer to do something like this. You need a good programmer, capable of looking at the code, understanding it, and communicating how it works effectively. A person like that can pull several times $20k for that much work.
It ain't much money. It may be competitive with tech writer incomes, but not with programmer incomes, and this is technically hard enough that you really need a good programmer.
I'd still be happy to be the one choosen to do this; getting payed to help the FSF is a rare honor. Now if I only had some writing ability...
- pmitros
It's about freedom. The $20k is just a bonus on the side.
FSF releases free documentation, but also sells printed versions. Although publishers can reprint competing versions, few if any do, and most people buy FSF copies.
I don't know if the FSF will make $20k back, but it's certainly not costing the FSF that much, and the FSF may even turn a profit.
Funny you should mention Linus' poor coding style.
There's a flamewar in the egcs mailing list on
this very topic. He basically says egcs/gcc
should bend over and accomodate his non-standard
gcc dependencies. This dude is getting a bit too
overbearing for my liking (and others in the
egcs project). I finally understand RMS'
dislike of Linux.
This doesn't just require a tech writer; this requires an expert programmer.
The price of paper (in bulk) has more than quadrupled over the past couple of years. That covers some of the difference.
I do not know zip about politics, so let me ask you, because today I discover that my boss must be a communist: he only gives me what I need and lets me work to the greatest possible extend. Same thing for the boss before him. In USA we call them Republicans, but you call them communists?? Hmm...
This goes to other people as well.
I have never said anything about GNOME not having the right to be created and developed. All I do is just point out the where and why it was created to begin with (which is negative in my opinion, but that is another story, and not the point).
Yeah, you did have the right to sell phones like anyone else, but also, many people not only have the right to create software, but they also have the right to use what ever business model to develop it. I have nothing against the FSF, or RMS. I think RMS will definitly be an individual they will be talking about in the history books. What pisses me off is that every one keeps talking about the right to compete, and the right to have both GNOME and KDE. Funny, why not also have the right to have it GPL'd, or proprietary, or a hybrid?? Oh so it is okay to reinvent the wheel, but it is not okay to go a non GPL license of software development. This is what GNOME means to me. It means "hey, if we don't go open source, we are in trouble, because proprietary software is iminent doom".
Like a propritery software company develops software just to suddenly disappear to leave all its clients hanging in the air?!?!? Troll Tech should have not been pressured to make Qt open source, nor does Apple need criticism for being non 100% open source, GPL, whatever.
Sure, people can create the same software and compete, but on the same token people have the same right to choose whatever business model and license for their software.
PGP has other uses than to encrypt data and messages. One very nice use of PGP is to ***SIGN*** a document. This way, people know it was really you who sent the message. No one else can forge your signature, and people without PGP can still read the message w/o caring about checking the PGP. The lease he could have done would be to place his PGP private key number at the bottom of the message. This the author of the message didn't -- which is why I believe, along with the fake from line, that this is a forgery.
I guess the sig line is actually supposed to make fun of MS's spelling. Not that funny though, just an innocent typo. I mean, if it was a really stupid MS thing like "Increase more floppy disk space by moving files to hard drive" (which actually exists somewhere) it would make more sense.
Oh well, no one said signatures had to be good...
Exactly! Why the hell didn't my stereo come
with a schematic?
As you well know, Bruce, this is part of RMS's anti-intellectual property agenda. For decades, Richard has borne a grudge against anyone who makes money as a result of intellectual property rights and seeks to put them out of business via predatory pricing. He says as much in his "GNU Manifesto," in which he vents his venom toward authors, inventors, and other who create intellectual property.
Your analogy regarding telephones, in the message above, is absurd. RMS's goal is not to compete by selling an alternative product at a fair price. Rather, his goal is to drive publishers out of business in the same way in which Microsoft drove Netscape out of business -- and is now seeking to drive others, such as Real Networks, out of business: via predatory pricing. The purpose of the FSF is to implement this agenda.
Oh, and by the way, my name is Brett, not "Brent."
--Brett Glass
The FSF does not fall into any of the legal categories for a non-profit. It is not charitable (charitable organizations must help ONLY the needy); it is not educational (an educational institution must have a curriculum); it is not scientific (a scientific organization must do formal research). The IRS should, quite frankly, yank its non-profit status, as the FSF simply does not meet any of the legal requirements for it. Non-profits organized for the express purpose of competing with for-profit businesses -- especially if the competition is unfair and for the purpose of putting them OUT of business -- are expressly forbidden by law.
--Brett Glass
Yes, it is interesting indeed that this could serve as a "vaporware" strategy, intended to deter publishers from developing books about GNOME.
What's PARTICULARLY interesting is the extent to which the FSF is emulating its avowed enemy -- Microsoft. Predatory pricing, propaganda (see the FSF Web site), FUD, vaporware, discriminatory licensing (the GPL discriminates against one particular class of users: commercial developers). Hmmm. What's that they say about people becoming their enemies?
--Brett Glass
Funny isn't it?
And this Gnome office suite is really nice. Ha!
If Real was willing to sell free-software to its customers we (users) would not have any of these concerns. But as customers we demand free-software, in the same way that my customer (by boss) demands that I hand him source code without restrictions -- including all IP of my spare time. Why is it that when it is my turn to be a customer and buy from Real, the law should be different and not allow me to make similar demands? The law is not a one-way street, it is a two-way street. It goes both ways. Since Real is unwilling to sell to me free-software at reasonable prices, I will share with my neighbors; in the same way we keep an eye on each others houses during vacations. Are you perhaps against programmers who would hand binary code to their bosses so that they can also sell it to others? Why not? This it is a solid pro-business concept. But if, for the same scenario, the parties are switched, you would perhaps call it anti-business. As long as the law allows me to sell free-software to my boss, others are also allowed to sell free-software anywhere they want to.
This doesn't smell FUD the least.
The only thing RMS has said is that FSF thinks that a free
documentation on how to write GNOME apps would be very
beneficial for its continued growth and that they are willing to
pay a substantial amount to anyone who picks up the glove.
They haven't even said they are going to do it, nor that it will
be better than anything some other publisher will be able to
produce.
They have simply asked out loud in the community if
someone is interested in taking the job.
This is comparable to MS, IBM or some other company
putting in a small advert in a specialist magazine, about
a job vacancy for the development of a new product, which
they just briefly outline so that the right people might get
interested in applying for it.
It can NOT be compared to million dollar campaigns, directed
towards potential consumers, saying that their product is
the best there is, spreading FUD about the competition.
/Tord
Sorry, but your history is wrong.
Cool, always glad to have someone more knowledgeable correct me. :)
he didnt call oreilly parasites
he called creator of tcl, john osterhout (or whoever you spell it) for parasite , after john announced additions to tcl that will not be free
I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but every time he mentions communism in this essay he prefixes it with "Russian". Which is, IMO, only fair since most of the people running around screaming "commie!!" at him are indeed thinking of the USSR.
Daniel
I think you should go read the essay mentioned in the title line before you claim that Microsoft is the FSF's avowed enemy. You're confusing RMS with ESR (not too hard when we reduce people to three-letter acronyms.. :-P )
There is, however, a minor (but important) difference between the FSF and Microsoft. Microsoft deters commercial competition so that they can commercially dominate the marketplace. The FSF deters proprietary software to end proprietary software. If you could show that the FSF was attempting to produce proprietary software in order to fill the vacuum left by all those starving businessmen who were put out of house and home by the GPL, you might have a point.
Daniel
The FSF doesn't just offer its wares to a limited "community" but to anyone, anywhere. It also offers them at a price of zero. Thus, the analogy of a cable network breaks down, as even your theoretical cable network could not survive under such conditions.
If the community starts from scratch, and, using their own money, buys a satellite dish, runs cable to every home in that community, and everyone gets 125 channels, does that constitute dumping? (I'm assuming they all adhere to the appropriate laws WRT subscription programming.)
Again, your analogy doesn't work for the reasons mentioned above. The FSF is not a "community" effort (though you'll frequently hear this word used in its propaganda) but rather a conspiracy to engage in illegal, predatory business practices.
Here's my understanding:
Mr. Stallman is *not* trying to keep people from earning money from intellectual property. This is a common misconception, especially among people who see the world as a circulatory system for money. He has often stressed that people can make money from their ideas; they just shouldn't do it in an immoral way.
Mr. Stallman is not being honest about his intentions. He believes that all intellectual property is evil and wrong. He says so -- repeatedly and in public. He believes that anyone -- be it a book publisher, an author, or a programmer -- who makes money as a result of owning intellectual property is doing so "in an immoral way" and should be put out of business. He actively promotes the use of all possible means to do so.
What he (and I, as far as that goes) does *not* like is the hoarding of information, especially when there is no net good that comes from that hoarding.
To Stallman, the ownership of intellectual property is "hoarding of information," whether it is done by an individual or by a company.
Ironically, in the Soviet Union, those who "hoarded" goods so as to avoid the impact of chronic shortages of goods were severely punished (unless, of course, they bribed the right people). "Hoarding" was a crime not because it wasn't a sensible thing to do but because it provided independence from the state.
Large corporations hoard money and resources.
A loaded and prejudicial statement that attempts to invoke prejudice against corporations (as if they were all necessarily and fundamentally evil). Individuals who own intellectual property also "hoard" it, according to Stallman. By analogy, I'm "hoarding money and resources" by owning my car and not letting you drive it whenever you want to.
As a people,
Note the false sense of "community" implied here.
we cannot get those resources from them.
Have you considered paying them for their valuable work? (Of course not. You want to get it for free.)
The world is changing. We no longer base our lives on industrialism. The means of production have been transferred from the elite to the collective. And we, the collective, are exsercising that power.
Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.
Yeah, right.
As the means of production is popularized,
I see you've learned nothing from the failure of Communism -- which, as in this case, was merely a cover for greed and spite.
the idea of central publishing becomes less relevent. If *I* am the producer of the information, shouldn't I see the benefits directly, by making it available directly? And if we cut out the middle-man (the publishers), aren't we simply making the information more directly available?
Whether publishing is centralized or decentralized has nothing to do with the fact that the FSF is engaging in a campaign to destroy legitimate businesses, when it itself is not a legal non-profit.
This is not "dumping."
Again, the dumping does not arise from decentralization but rather from the concerted effort of the FSF to destroy businesses, livelihoods, and consumer choice via predatory pricing.
I think there has to be some sort of economic leverage to be considered dumping. Instead, it is a populist movement against the entrenched and outdated companies that have a stranglehold on production and distribution.
It appears that you're completely absorbed in Marxist rhetoric about the "means of production." You also do not understand the definition of "dumping."
You're right, though, Mr. Glass. Selling telephones is not like the Free Software movement. Rather, free software is more like public access cable, where anyone can contribute, and where anyone can be heard.
Like Stallman, you intentionally attempt to confuse "free speech" and "free beer" in the above. You also describe public access cable in a way that shows that you are ignorant of how it works. It is not true that "anyone" can contribute or be heard.
I can see that you'd be terrified, as a journalist.
Oh, horrors! I'm quaking in my boots.
Your job may be outdated in just a few years.
Hardly. Even the FSF has admitted that good writing skills are needed -- though in a backhanded way -- by attempting to find a writer who will compromise his professional prospects for a mere $20K.
Well, welcome to the real world, where everyone has an opinion,
To quote a certain famous rock star, "Opinions are like a**holes. Everybody has one."
and we all get to share them equally; and we are all terrified we may be outdated in just a few years.
Maybe you are; I'm not. However, if you put yourself out of work by embracing Stallman's spiteful agenda, I feel no sympathy for you.
I'd like to think I'm agile enough, and have enough foresight, to survive.
If you had foresight, you would realize that sabotaging your own future by engaging in a conspiracy to put YOURSELF out of work -- as well as destroying honest businesses, livelihoods, and markets -- is not a very good idea.
--Brett Glass
There are many invaluable books about mechanical engineering written by bunch of experts. Each expert usually writes a chapter or two. The whole project can be managed by an expert as well. This sort of work is highly visible so people contribute for the sake of name recognition (most of these guys are already well known as well). I do not know how much they get paid but would not be surprised it is either symbolic or nothing at all. Since all they have to do is write a chapter or two, this can be managed with the other project they are involved.
Apparently, they BOTH want to kill Real Networks, and for the same reason. Neither can stand to see Real Networks making money by selling software.
Hmmm.
--Brett Glass
Please stop using the term "Free" to mean anything but "no cost". This is too confusing. Use the term "liberated" or something else which does not have the same American connotation of, as you admit, "free beer".
The goals of the FSF are (a) control and (b) to wreak Richard Stallman's vengeance upon commercial developers. Microsoft, too, seeks control and vengeance. It just happens to be pragmatic enough to seek money also.
--Brett Glass
ANSI C spec is written by many people and
the wording of one phrase can be debated for hours.
how the hell is one person supposed to do that?
you cant even get access to the GNOME people
to talk about the issues unless you are considered 'cool'
i dunno if you have noticed but free software
'leaders' tend to hate democracy and prefer
to be dictators. no different at the FSF.
The KDE team donated money to the FSF (well before their anti-KDE campaign, I suppose).
In effect they were supporting Gnome in the beginning, and they're now, in a way, paying somenody to improve Gnome's rather pathetic documentation...
Nice kind of cooperation on their part, isn't it?
Look here for a collection of KDE books.
Especially the two books of Kalle (Qt and KDE) are really worth a look, and so are the programming books of Thiem and Lehner. For now, the Qt book is the only programming book I know of in English.
RMS claims that he is promoting so-called "free" software. But the fact is that he is using the software (which isn't "free" at all but rather encumbered by a restrictive license designed to destroy markets) to further a personal vendetta against any person or business who creates, and profits from, intellectual property. Freely redistributable software, collaboratively developed software, and software for which source was available were all around long before Stallman and will be around long after his demise and that of the FSF. But Stallman's spiteful attempts to use such software as a weapon against his fellow programmers should be recognized for what they are: childish destructiveness. --Brett Glass
I hear the FSF pays low salaries for their technical writers and they abandon all their projects! $20k-26k is nothing for writing a computer book!!! Go to ORA and get royalties, even if its a proprietary book at least you'll be helping Open Source with it. One day maybe there will be publishers doing Open Source docs, but not with RMS............
If you make food at home, no problem. But if you give away hamburgers with the express intent of putting your local hamburger stand out of business (and it's the little guy you'll hurt; MacDonald's can survive even if you do this), you're engaged in a destructive and predatory business practice.
This is what the GPL does. It doesn't hurt Microosoft significantly; it does hurt your fellow programmers who seek to start new businesses that might compete with Microsoft.
--Brett Glass
Why do you think Stallman wants the world to call Linux (for which he wants credit even though his contribution to it was minimal) "GNU/Linux?" Why does he insist that all of the code in any FSF project be 100% owned by the FSF? Why do you think the GPL and the "GNU" project started in the first place? (Hint: Richard Stallman was resentful of commercial spinoffs from MIT's AI Lab, because someone else had control of the code and he couldn't just play with it at will.) It's all about a childish grasping for control.
You're incorrect about changes to the GPL not being retroactive. The FSF expressly requests on its Web site that developers license their software so that it falls under the latest version of the GPL. Thus, if the next version gives the FSF complete rights to it, or says something about first-born children, the author can do nothing.
And you're also incorrect that anything licensed under the GPL will still be under the GPL in 1,000 years. Copyrights expire after 100 years, so anything that is now GPLed will be available to anyone at that time.
--Brett Glass
I've always liked you, especially your columns & forum messages in Infoworld.
Thank you!
Lately, however, you seem to be on this anti-RMS crusade.
Nope, I'm not on any kind of "crusade." I've known RMS for more than 15 years, and am quite familiar with his attitudes, his goals, and his agenda. Sadly, many people who are not familiar with his intentions are fooled by the rhetoric in which he cloaks them.
The fact is, simply, that Richard believes that no one should be able to own intellectual property, and that this goal should be pursued by any possible means. This is Richard's obsession; his mania.
I don't agree with all of the man's ideals either, but he does have a right (and a logical reason) to request that someone write free GNOME documentation.
He may request it -- however, his motives, again, are to forestall and preclude the creation of books and other publications about GNOME on which the author might hold the copyright and hence be rewarded for his or her work.
RMS is not against profit-making. He is against profit making at the expense of freedom.
Only if you consider owning intellectual property to be a denial of freedom. In fact, the reverse is true. Depriving authors of the right to their work -- which is what Stallman wants -- is anti-freedom. And the GPL, by denying commercial developers the opportunity to use the code while offering it for free to their customers, is not only anti-freedom (it makes the software less free than other licenses, such as the BSD license) but a direct attack on software developers who want to earn a living by selling their work.
He does not believe that economic incentive or conveinience is a proper excuse for giving up freedom.
Not so. Richard uses the word "freedom" over and over again because it's a strong word to use in propaganda. (It's also a "pivot word" -- his writings shift between different meanings of the word repeatedly so as to spin fallacious arguments.) But his real goal, again, is destructive. He has the attitude of a child who believes that all other children should be forced to let him play with their toys. He is motivated not by a desire to see "freedom" but rather by spite and malice which he has nursed for the better part of two decades.
If you want to fight RMS, fight him on that principle: that sometimes, yes, giving up freedom for convenience or economic incentive *IS* what we want to do, as the end economic benefits of copyright incentive does produce MORE freedom in the end (by increasing our standard of living).
To do so would be to accept many of the fallacies which Richard is promulgating. Allowing others to own property isn't a loss of freedom; it's respect for their basic rights.
RMS has given us a gift through his radicalism: it forces people to take stock of the business and IP world around them and ask, "Do I want this?".
Not so. Richard's agenda has hurt and in some cases destroyed markets, livelihoods, and companies. It has also aided Microsoft by posing a threat to its potential competition. Be, Inc. will likely be killed not by Microsoft but by GPLed software.
I think the recent interest in open source licences throughout the industry is a result of many reasonable people saying, "well, you know, intellectual property protection isn't ALWAYS that beneficial, nor an incentive to me."
Non sequitur. One can reveal source but retain one's intellectual property rights.
It makes us THINK about what we value. Right now, the majority don't REALLY value IP freedom.
Companies are not revealing source because they "value IP freedom." They're doing it to get volunteers to do some of their development and debugging work, or to appear to go along with the current foolish trend, or to make headlines.
I personally don't think most people *will* value it for the forseeable future (3-5 years), but after that, who knows?
Again, revealing source does not equate to "freedom," in any of the several senses of the word which RMS mixes with intentionally confusing abandon.
In the end, I suggest you start understanding RMS' position better in the future, lest people label you as a troll who radically twists a situation to suit his own opinion.
I understand RMS's position far better than most of the world. I spoke with him before he formulated the slick and deceptive rhetoric he now spouts at every opportunity (though he was just as single-minded then as now). His intentions have not changed; he has merely gotten better at dissembling.
--Brett Glass
It sounds as if many may be ignorant of this.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
It has the money, and bodies, to reimplement anything it chooses. (That's why Microsoft chose to write its own TCP/IP stack.) The GPL hurts the little guy -- not the big guy.
--Brett Glass
Why would we want a hack job instead
of the O'Reilly book that will surely
appear covering this? For online docs,
the manpages should be fine (once you
find them).
1) What do you want in the manual?
2) How comprehensive do you want it to be?
Guidelines would be nice.
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
One of the main KDE developers has written an O'Reilly book on programming Qt. I'm not sure if he talks about KDE much in it, but that's certainly enough to get one going. All of the API has good documentation (could still use a bit of help); any moderate programmer who knows C++ can just take that and go.
Still, I would have to agree that a full O'Reilly book on KDE programming would be nice. On the other hand, considering KDE 2.0 may be out at the end of this year or so, perhaps waiting until then to make a book would be more appropriate.
According to here, it's finished and available to read. It doesn't look like it's all that long, but still cute.
Just please don't anyone use the recently reviewed book on RTS game programming (and many, many windows programming books) style of berating the user with what programming is, how to make a while statement, etc.
:)
Does anyone know if the FSF is asking for complete ownership or are they willing to offer a piece of the profits from the dead tree copies?
:)
I wonder if it would be appropriate to send in the documentation in Word format
This sig is intentionally left blank.
Remember, writing is just as much of a craft as programming. I can "write" a PERL script, but someone who's spent a lot of time studying PERL can do it better and faster than I can. There is no way I could turn out enough usable PERL code per day to make a living at it.
Now turn the above paragraph around.
The ideal writer for a Gnome manual would be a team, not a single person. Put a good programmer and a good writer together and you'd have a hell of piece of work.
(I'm not looking for the job, thanks. I have too much to write already...)
BTW, the FSF is listed in Microsoft's Business Planner in Office 2000. Never thought I'd see that happen in a million years. Way to go!
I'm sure I will regret posting this, but...
Before accepting a contract to write this book, I suggest contacting other people who have been paid to write documentation for the FSF in order to determine what they thought of their experience. Due to privacy concerns, I cannot go into detail, but I know of at least one person who was very unsatisfied with his experience. (hehe, not me!)
You should at a minimum make sure there are very well defined criteria for determining when a particular piece of the book is of acceptable quality. I hear that RMS can be extremely nitpicky about documention, requiring many, many revisions before he is satisfied. This can be frustrating and time consuming for everyone involved.
I seriously doubt you'd make more than $20K in royalties. Even if you made $10/book in royalties (unlikely; you'd probably get less), that'd require 2,000 books to be sold. I doubt that this book will sell 2,000 copies. Do even 2,000 people use GNOME?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by ICouldntGetTheAccountIWanted:
> rights to a well-written and comprehensive GNOME > programming manual.
Posted by tha_skunk:
/.! :-) ).
Yeah I know it's sorta long and, but I really think this is even more interesting for
It's a mail on the gnome mailing list about
Free Documentation ( free as Free Software not beer
Here's the link so check it out. It's really worth it.
click it
Free Documentation anyone?????
From what I've heard, for GTK+ itself (Dunno about GTK--), whenever the documentation doesn't suffice for advanced purposes, the source is so well-commented that it's a manual in itself.
And if you wind up developing against 1.3 whenever it branches, the source will be the only guaranteed up-to-date docs.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Linus, Alan Cox, et al, do document their work. It's called "source code."
Why should they spend so much time working on English-text (or German-text, or what-have-you) documentation, when they have perfect documentation right there?
How many people really need to understand the kernel? Basically, if you can't read the source code, should you even think about touching the kernel?
I can understand a Gnome Programmer's Guide (though for this, too, I use the source as documentation). This benefits neophytes. But the kernel isn't *for* neophytes. It's for people who know what the hell they are about. It's for people who like to work on bare metal, and already know *how* to work at this level.
Say what you want about Linus' coding style. (Many people do.) But to complain because he doesn't document is like complaining because your stereo doesn't come with a schematic.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Actually, proprietary software *is* imminent doom. But I speak from a moralistic, and not absolute, point of view.
However, the two cases you bring up are not good ones. The KDE/Qt rift came because of the incompatibility of the GPL and the Qt licenses. Since KDE was essentially GPL, it should not have used a non-free toolkit as its foundation. I'm not sure there was any legal implications, but there were some fundamental distribution questions that were left unresolved.
And Apple bragged about its "Open Source" software. "Open Source" is a licensed mark. To claim to be "Open Source" means that the Apple license had to fit certain criteria. A lot of people felt their license did *not* meet the standards, and so there was a sound and fury signifying nothing.
It isn't about hypocricy. It's about standing up for your beliefs, and stopping people from warping the core of your beliefs. If you want a commercial model, by all means, go commercial. We may taunt you, but we will not deny your right to sell your wares. However, if you claim to adhere to the core of the belief, then you had best be prepared to adhere to the cause of the belief.
We are too painfully aware of marketing rape. If some large software company released a few lines of code to their standard office package, but did not allow that code to be used in a way fitting the free software model, and claimed they were suddenly "free software," we'd of course be suspicious.
If they wanted to do the same thing and call it, "Bound Software," we wouldn't complain. It isn't the act that is abhorrent to us, but the perversion of our ideals.
And lastly: proprietary software companies *have* disappeared, leaving their customers hanging in the air. If you haven't been around long enough to notice, please read a little history. Let's talk Atari, and Amiga, and Ashton-Tate. Let's talk WordStar. Let's talk Geo.
Hypocrisy is a strong accusation. I trust you can back it up with facts, and not just rhetoric?
-Tony
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If a community gets together and builds a cable company, does that infringe on the rights of other cable companies? If the community starts from scratch, and, using their own money, buys a satellite dish, runs cable to every home in that community, and everyone gets 125 channels, does that constitute dumping? (I'm assuming they all adhere to the appropriate laws WRT subscription programming.)
Here's my understanding:
Mr. Stallman is *not* trying to keep people from earning money from intellectual property. This is a common misconception, especially among people who see the world as a circulatory system for money. He has often stressed that people can make money from their ideas; they just shouldn't do it in an immoral way.
What he (and I, as far as that goes) does *not* like is the hoarding of information, especially when there is no net good that comes from that hoarding.
Large corporations hoard money and resources. As a people, we cannot get those resources from them. Large companies hoarde information. We *can* re-create that information, or even better that information. That is what we are doing. In this way, we wrest a small but substantial chunk of power and put it back in the hands of individuals.
The world is changing. We no longer base our lives on industrialism. The means of production have been transferred from the elite to the collective. And we, the collective, are exsercising that power. As the means of production is popularized, the idea of central publishing becomes less relevent. If *I* am the producer of the information, shouldn't I see the benefits directly, by making it available directly? And if we cut out the middle-man (the publishers), aren't we simply making the information more directly available?
This is not "dumping." I think there has to be some sort of economic leverage to be considered dumping. Instead, it is a populist movement against the entrenched and outdated companies that have a stranglehold on production and distribution.
You're right, though, Mr. Glass. Selling telephones is not like the Free Software movement. Rather, free software is more like public access cable, where anyone can contribute, and where anyone can be heard.
I can see that you'd be terrified, as a journalist. Your job may be outdated in just a few years. Well, welcome to the real world, where everyone has an opinion, and we all get to share them equally; and we are all terrified we may be outdated in just a few years.
I'd like to think I'm agile enough, and have enough foresight, to survive.
But I could be wrong.
- Tony
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
We'd know for sure if it was digitally signed.
Oh My!
I believe that's a computer RMS uses for correspondence sometimes. I remember seeing santafe.edu addresses in other messages to/from him.
I've always liked you, especially your columns & forum messages in Infoworld.
Lately, however, you seem to be on this anti-RMS crusade. I don't agree with all of the man's ideals either, but he does have a right (and a logical reason) to request that someone write free GNOME documentation.
RMS is not against profit-making. He is against profit making at the expense of freedom. He does not believe that economic incentive or conveinience is a proper excuse for giving up freedom.
If you want to fight RMS, fight him on that principle: that sometimes, yes, giving up freedom for convenience or economic incentive *IS* what we want to do, as the end economic benefits of copyright incentive does produce MORE freedom in the end (by increasing our standard of living). RMS has given us a gift through his radicalism: it forces people to take stock of the business and IP world around them and ask, "Do I want this?".
I think the recent interest in open source licences throughout the industry is a result of many reasonable people saying, "well, you know, intellectual property protection isn't ALWAYS that beneficial, nor an incentive to me." It makes us THINK about what we value. Right now, the majority don't REALLY value IP freedom. I personally don't think most people *will* value it for the forseeable future (3-5 years), but after that, who knows?
In the end, I suggest you start understanding RMS' position better in the future, lest people label you as a troll who radically twists a situation to suit his own opinion.
-Stu
"Wrong. The FSF has the right to enhance the work and then keep the rights to its changes. Third parties do not. "
Could you explain this better?
Any third party can modify an FSF work (software or book) any way they see fit, and redistribute it any way they see fit, so long as there is at least one medium that is accessible "at cost" and others can also freely derive from this offshoot work as well.
What right does the FSF have that a third party does not? You're being awfully cryptic here, and dare I say, somewhat ignorant.
-Stu
Hmph. Everyone will just buy the O'Reilly book anyhow. It would be neat to see the FSF collaborate with them.
I think if you're going to try something like this it should NOT be flat fee based. I think the author deserves a fair share of the profit from the sale of the printed version of this book.
I don't know what is a fair value, but I think at least 15% is a start. (15% of the profit, not the cost of the book itself) I think that would encourage the author to do a REAL good job since the quality of the book will be reflected in how much $$$ they make.
Ex-Nt-User
Interesting. The implication is that those of use working on Free (Open Source) Software are not legitimate. Would you care to elucidate?
So I'm willing to write programs and give them away. So tens of thousands of other people are also willing to write programs and give them away. How does this take away from anyone? And if I choose to write a manual and give it away (not even taking into account the FSF's rather generous offer), how does this take away from anyone?
In fact, it is *giving* to people. If people are willing to do this, why are you complaining? It is our right to do with our intellectual property as we wish.
Writers recieve hardly any recompense for their works anymore. Not only is it harder to get published, but the payments are the same as they were 15 years ago. (The average is going up, but that's because Stephen King and Robert Jordan and anything about Monica Lewinski skew the numbers terribly.) Meanwhile publishers are charging about 30% more than they were 15 years ago. Where does the extra money go? I suspect it goes to the publisher.
Writers will rarely get $20k for a single work, even something like the proposed Programmer's Manual.
Yes, I know you write (Computerworld, isn't it?), so your view is from the inside of the industry. But from *outside* the industry, people who write Free Software wouldn't mind Free Documentation. And since it doesn't take away anyone's rights, why are you upset?
-Tony
You're right; I don't understand public access cable. We don't have that in Alaska. I get all of my knowledge of public access from Wayne's World and old MST3k episodes.
But you just as obviously don't understand social theory. "Communism" has never been tried on a large scale. "Socialism" has, though, and has generally failed.
Yes, I do feel that corporations are dangerous, if not evil in general. Currently the goal of any corporation is to grow as much as possible, by any means. (There are a few exceptions, though I can't think of any at the moment.) Since money is essentially power, and power allows for even more growth, companies tend to grab as much money as possible, and let as little money go as possible. This is hoarding, and has nothing to do with the protection of individuals from the state. After a certain point, a company can gain enough power to replace the state as a ruling organization. (Don't think so? Look at the regulation MS has managed to excersize on the industry.) The centralization of power into corporations my necessity takes power away from individuals.
I realize our opinions differ here, and I'm not likely to convince you any differently. By my central ideal is simply this: any single individual is more important than any single organization.
The core precepts of Marxism-- that the individual is the most important part of any society, that industrialism tends to destroy humanity and enslave its populace to the corporations-- are not flawed. The conclusions are a bit off-center, I think. The thought of replacing one faceless organization with another is rather ludicrous.
I think you misunderstand Mr. Stallman's goals. His is a reaction to the greed and selfishness endemic to our society. He encourages people to be less greedy, and less selfish. How can that can be a bad thing?
I fail to see how I'm sabotaging my own or anyone else's future. I work as the senior DBA at a native health organization. My job is not dependent on my writing or my code. However, I enjoy both writing and programming; so I contribute, because it is what I love to do. I am contributing much more than a simple opinion in some trade rag.
And if you are not terrified of your future, you probably should be. Everyone does have an opinion. And we no longer rely on tree-based mass-produced periodicals to find opinions. So your line of work is quickly become commoditized. If this doesn't frighten you, you must have some other skill than the ability to express simple opinions with good grammer and proper spelling.
Conspiracy? I don't think so. Change is happening right now. I'm simply doing my part to make sure the change is good, and in the right direction.
And as far as destroying honest businesses: I don't think there is a such thing as an honest business in this industry. People are honest; businesses are not. Any time a business offers an IPO, they sell their soul to continuous growth, at any cost. And since there are few mom-and-pop companies that will be affected, I don't see how we are destroying honest business.
We'll disagree with each other. I doubt we'll be able to sway each other, no matter how eloquent or thoughtful our opinions; we draw different conclusions from the same set of facts. This happens, even among rational and intelligent people. (Not that I claim to be either.)
Thanks for this chance at debate. I enjoy a lively discussion.
I see. FSF wants to "control," by giving up control. You mentioned that the FSF can change the license at any time; this is not true. The FSF can change the license, but it is not retroactive. Anything released under the GPL today will remain under the current GPL in a thousand years.
This is the part of your argument that doesn't quite make sense. I can see the "Richard Stallman and Avenging Angel (or Devil)." But the licensing/control issue? I'm not too clear on the logic here.
Could you please elucidate?
You are right. The copyright won't be an issue in 1,000. My mistake; I'm aware of the time-limit, but in my rush to rhetoric, neglected it.
You're incorrect about changes to the GPL not being retroactive. The FSF expressly requests on its Web site that developers license their software so that it falls under the latest version of the GPL. Thus, if the next version gives the FSF complete rights to it, or says something about first-born children, the author can do nothing.
No, my statement was not incorrect. Your understand seems to be incomplete. If you read the GPL, it states
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Who gets the option? The user. Who owns the copyright on the piece of software this came from? Me. I wrote the software. I put it under the GPL.
The reason Mr. Stallman wants GNU attached to Linux is because the kernel is Linux; the system is a Linux kernel with the rest being mostly FSF-owned GNU software. His demands are not unreasonable, if a bit silly. He does not want credit for the Linux kernel; he wants credit for the parts that are FSF-owned GNU, which represents many more years of development.
And he does not insist that all GPL software be owned by the FSF. He insists that all FSF-funded software development be credited to the FSF, under the terms of the GPL.
This whole thing is getting very interesting, and very confusing. I barely know what to think anymore.
Well that's my question. If it is published and sold in bookstores, does the author receive the proceeds, or do these proceeds go to the "FSF"?
Why not just write a good book, and have it published yourself, or perhaps through O'Reilly? You'd make more money than 20k that way.
One of the more interesting essays on the GNU website talks about how money isn't a good incentive for high quality work. Either GNU (i.e. RMS) have changed their tune, or they're getting really desparate for documentation :).
That's a very good point. I've been thinking about writing a little game that uses gtk/gnome. I think there is a web page documenting gtk someplace, but I'll probably depend on the code for existing programs to figure it out. I did some Xt/Motif programming years ago, so that might help out some too.
I've heard that Qt has some very good documentation, but I already have gnome and don't want to try to keep two major tookits/environments up-to-date.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Every publisher I've been talking with lately says they'd be willing to use an OSD-compliant license on their book as long as the license applies on the day that printed copies get to stores and not before. That sounds fair to me. It gives the publisher lead-time over the other publishers who did not pay for the work, and we get free documentation.
Really? In The Open-Source Revolution Tim O'Reilly says that they tried it and it didn't work. Do you happen to know what the difference was? Was it the delayed release of the "source code"?
In fact, the opposite is true; as books on a topic come out, other publishers notice and say "Gee, we should really cover this topic too." We're seeing this happen with Python books now; for a long time there were only two books on Python, one from O'Reilly and one from MIS Press. This year, two more O'reilly books have come out and there are at least two more in preparation; another publisher is working on two books, and there are two or three more one-shot projects. (I've written a bit of documentation, and occasionally get e-mails asking me if I want to write a book, which I have to always decline -- not enough spare time.)
So, the more GNOME books, the better for GNOME. It's not going to kill off GNOME books from other publishers.
A long time ago, I worked in a retail electronics store. At the time, we'd just started selling telephones in competition with the phone company. One day, a woman came to my counter in the store and told me that I was taking food out of her children's mouths by selling those phones, because her husband worked for the phone company! She thought I should really be ashamed of myself.
I didn't argue, she just seemed too silly. She never considered that I had just as much right to compete with her husband's business as her husband had to compete with mine.
I have already written a GPL'ed chapter and have had it published. The book made #12 on Amazon's list. I only made $1500 from that chapter, but I got invited to speak in Iceland as a result of the chapter (the conference paid for the trip and a week's tourism) and a number of other fun things have happened. I was compensated fairly.
If you can't stand the competition, too darn bad. We're not going away.
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Why 20K? Because they are absolutely sure that people will donate that much to sponsor this work. No problem.
They paid Ian Murdock about $10,000 for work on Debian. This is not a first.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Every publisher I've been talking with lately says they'd be willing to use an OSD-compliant license on their book as long as the license applies on the day that printed copies get to stores and not before. That sounds fair to me. It gives the publisher lead-time over the other publishers who did not pay for the work, and we get free documentation.
The down-side is that you might make less royalties on the book. Many of us can live with that, and if the author makes it clear to potential purchasers which publishers pay him a royalty and which do not, he might make a good lot of money anyway.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
RMS works out of santa fe? ye gads, the place is even cooler than I thought...
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Wow. A new payment paradigm for us tech writers: I've never gotten propositioned to write a manual "on spec" like this. Too bad I don't already have a Linux box up and running. Doing this kind of stuff is my meat and drink.
Tell ya what. Give me a system (maybe a bitchin' VA Research machine) to work on, and I'll just do the job for the good of the community. The $$ can go back to the FSF so they can extrude more code.
Let's see what kinds of replies this gets...
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
... we can definitley do better than that. No offense to the writers of the original project (they only had 24 hours and it wasn't planned at all in advance), but I'm sure we could do a much better job.
The more I think of it, the more I like the idea. Collaboration using CVS, diff, patch, etc... seems the ideal way to write documentation for a project such as Gnome. I hope someone with more knowledge on the subject than I have picks up on the idea and gets the ball rolling.
The other idea I had is to create a utlilty along the lines of javadoc that creates documentation from comments in the code itself. I love the Java API reference. It's one of the greatest Java resources and is one of the main reason I choose to write my shcool programs in Java as opposed to C/C++
Steve
I seem to remember a project a few months ago where a group planned to write a book in a day to demonstrate the collaborative power of the internet. How about doing something like that with respect to a Gnome programming manual? The project would be done by hundreds of people... it may take more than the 24 hours allowed by the previous attempt, but that's ok. The money could then be donated back to some free software project. I may know nothing about programming Gnome, but I'd sure be glad to donate a little proofreading time.
By the way... and this is a bit off topic... does anyone know how that project turned out? Did they actually produce a book? If so, where can I take a look? I've been curious how that turned out, but never took the time to hunt it down.
Steve
It's just like open source software: anyone can print the book, no one gets proceeds unless the publisher makes donations.
Why not just write a good program, and publish it yourself as shareware, or perhaps make a deal with Microsoft? You'd make more money that way.
Sorry, but your history is wrong. XEmacs started as Lucid Emacs, a project by Lucid, Inc. to create a front end to their commercial Energize IDE. This started before Emacs 19 was out. The main reason for forking was technical differences. Lucid had no problem at the time with giving the changes back to RMS. But RMS didn't want a lot of them: he disagreed with the Lucid folks on a number of issues.
Problems with assignments have made it harder to re-unify the Emacses, but the major contributors (e.g. Lucid) did sign (so all the original work people like jwz did while at Lucid could be used in the FSF Emacs).
Ah, another bogus attack on RMS and all his works. RMS has long said that free software needs free documentation, so that when new features are added to the program, these new features can be documented. This doesn't mean that every book telling how to use free software needs to be free, but it does mean that there needs to be at least one high-quality manual that is free. If others feel they can do a better job competing against the free manual, let them at it.
RMS wants a free manual, and he's putting his money where his mouth is. No author is obliged to accept his offer; furthermore, publishers like O'Reilly are free to fund other books. Free software and documentation are a part of the market. As a writer, you're simply going to have to deal with it.
> Isn't it more important to get _user_ documentation out the door?
No. A new project of mine requires me to learn GUI programming, which I'm really a rank newbie at. I picked up gtk+, didn't like what was involved with subclassing, and went to Gtk--. And there simply isn't enough documentation to learn it.
Thus I use the excellently documented Qt. It's not a matter of politics, I just cannot learn without documentation. Gnome has lost this developer because of the state of its documentation, and I can't imagine I'm the only one.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Unacceptable. I want documentation, I will not deal with source only. I want it all there in one place. I'm glad RMS recognizes this need too.
Also, I don't see that Gtk-- has the transformation abilities that QPainter does. Almost certainly not the encapsulation (i.e. I can have multiple QPainters). Maybe it does, but it's not documented.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
*tsk, tsk* Did we forget our http:// again? :-)
I have a 100+ page manual for Solaris that I have been working on for a couple months now. It is highly detailed and explains to even the lamest user how to configure, setup and install all the necessary open-source software on a Sun box running Solaris 2.6. It isn't GNOME but would anyone be interested in a very well written book on Solaris?
I basically wrote it to assist later SysAdmins. When I arrived here at this job there was no documentation. It's designed for neophytes and has already proven quite useful. I'd take a couple hundred dollars and make it available for anyone.
I don't see why we all just colaborate on furthuring KDE current technology position.
As far as I can tell, you're pissed off because people are working on the project they prefer, and using the software they prefer -- rather than working on what you tell them to.
Miguel Icaza and Red Hat sound more like Bill Gates day by day.
You shouldn't be drinking so early in the day. It's bad for your liver.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
. . . but the name-calling only obscures the fundamental importance of the issues he has been raising.
What, you just noticed that? It's not a "but", though. It's the whole point.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
You know, I have been very good in restraining myself, but this notion that RMS is some kind of "communist" is the worst kind of infantile name-calling. It shows very clearly that those who toss out such insults so casually have no concept of what RMS is trying to do and even less about what "socialist" or "communist" means.
RMS is a classic "liberal" in the original 18th century Enlightenment sense of that word.
You can agree or disagree with his project (and I find myself on one side or the other depending on the situation), but the name-calling only obscures the fundamental importance of the issues he has been raising.
--------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
In the US (I don't know about other places), if you buy a book and don't like it, you can return it to the bookstore for a refund. The bookstore then returns the book to the publisher, and the publisher gives the store credit for another purchase from that publisher. If the book is a mass-market paperback, the bookstore doesn't bother returning the whole book; it just returns the torn-off book cover.
This is an accountant's nightmare. The publisher can't predict how much profit a book has made until the returns bounce back. (On average, though, about half of all books sold are returned, so when you buy a book, you're really paying for the printing of two books.)
And as long as the publisher has books sitting in the warehouse, they're taxed at their current wholesale price, even if the publisher knows that a certain proportion of these copies are destined for Buck-A-Book.
And the people who own publishers don't simply want their companies to make money; they want them to make as much money as other businesses. A book that is likely to become gradually more popular over time, or a book that would have a small but devoted following, is therefore not a good investment for the publisher.
And most titles don't make money for their publishers; the profits from Stephen King and Robert Jordan novels cover the losses that their publishers suffer from promising but unsuccessful works by others.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
>RMS would not be against digital signature
Sorry if that didn't come out right-that's what I meant also...
What I believe the author of the previous post ment is that RMS is opposed to the idea of having a file on his computer which others can not read, i.e. the file with his private key in it. Not that RMS is aginst mail encryption, he may well be. I personaly think that freedom and privacy come hand in hand, but then again I don't always agree with RMS.
-Ted
> What would you folks, as the target audience, like to see in a "comprehensive" GNOME book?
Obviously, I'm only speaking for myself here, but what I would like to see is a book that assumes the reader knows about GNOME and so on, maybe a coupla chapters at the beginning about (A) Gtk+, and a quick overview, and (B) the concept/theory behind the object component modeling (bonobo) system, again as a quick refresher.
The meat of the book would ideally be made up of paired-off chapters, with the first of each pair going through the theory of the control/object/component/memory space/whatever, and the second some actual code and examples.
I think C would be a good language to use, as pretty much everyone knows C (programmers, that is). Python, Tcl and so on are common, true, but there are a number of people who aren't familiar with them. But pretty much anyone who would be reading the book could be assumed to know C.
A good idea might be appendices in the back with language bindings, function/object declarations, etc... for a couple of common languages, to help those who are interested in using something other than C. The first of the chapter pairs (the theory part) would also come in handy here as well.
That's pretty much it for the basics, I think. I can't think off the top of my head of anything else I might want, although I'm sure I will once I hit the "Submit" button.
As for scope and so on... ie: how far to take it... well, I don't know, since I really don't know everything that is involved. That's why I'd want to read the book!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
From what I understand, RMS is an absolute perfectionist, and insists that everything be done over and over and over and over and over... again until it is done exactly right, and perfect to his liking.
This (again, to my understanding), is where most people's problems with him come from.
To someone (such as myself), who is also a perfectionist (in most things), this wouldn't be much of a problem, as I tend to impose the same sort of stringent guidelines on myself anyway.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
To me, one of my favourite parts of writing a program is doing the user manual (dead tree version) at the end. (Company I work for requires them). Just so happens that I love that sorta stuff. Most of the developers hand it over to the documentation team to do. I much prefer doing it myself.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
That is what I meant :-)
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Please reveal your identity, before you make statements like that.
I can see it now... It's going to be a huge fight on who's going to get the best out first... I think I will take a seat on the side and just watch...
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
X-Authentication-Warning: wijiji.santafe.edu: rms set sender to rms@gnu.org using -f
tis fake, methinks.
The search effects the results.
Isn't it more important to get _user_ documentation out the door? GNOME for Dummies would be a good start.
100% agreed.
;)
I am sick to the hind teeth of all this continuous bickering and political infighting.
I fully accept that evangelists such as RMS are necessary to kick start something like the Open Source movement, but I think we can see now that it is rolling and isn't likely to go wrong any time soon.
So what if RedHat, or anyone else decides to try to make a bit of money from it, it's not like we're suddenly wake up and find billg in charge of it.
Chill out and decide which desktop system you prefer using based on it's features and it's style, then use it to do something productive, like code more OSS apps rather than wasting everyone's time "bickering and arguing about who killed who".
So there
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
--
(a) Write a better book
(b) Find publisher who will sell high-quality book
(c) Make money off royalties from high-quality book
Nothing in the offer seems to foreclose this possibility. If the RMS-commissioned book turns out to be an excellent book, great. If it doesn't, the market is open for a better one.
Nonetheless I see your point. There does seem to a bit of an element of Microsoftian "announce vaporware to deter competitors from even bothering to try". Nonetheless I haven't seen anyone else try to produce a gnome programming book. And it would be really useful.
.. Orwell's 'Animal Farm'.
.. but "Animal Farm" does contain many interesting truths about human nature. And I don't see any particular reason why any one group of people would be immune to that sort of thing .. "Free Software Good, Commercial Software Bad" or something like that. But as long as people remain capable of critical thought, nothing like that should pose any problems.
Personally I don't know how true it is what people are saying about the FSF and RMS
This might be a good project to try out on sourceXchange (once it is launched). If US$20k isn't enough, then perhaps if many more people put in about US$20 each, it would be plenty.
I agree the writing a book is a heck of a lot of work, much more than most people would think.
:)
I have to disagree, though, that $20K is not much money. I've done professional writing for much less, if you pro-rate individual chapters and scale it to a whole book. Perhaps I just work cheap.
Here are the factors that play into how much this type of job is worth:
-How soon do they need it? This is a major facotr for people like me who have a day job, and do their writing at night.
-What kind of author are you looking for? Are you looking for the proven, best-selling author, or are you willing to give an unknown a chance?
-What, exactly, is desired in the book? Are we talking mostly code examples, text explainations, docs for people who don't really know programming, or what?
-How much upkeep is the $20K expected to buy for after-the-fact? Presumably, some updates would be desired when GNOME gets upgraded.
-How many pages/chapters?
Does anyone know if this was an actual offer of work, or was he just giving his opinion on how much something like this would be worth?
A lot depends on other factors. Take a look at a comment I made on a different thread for this topic.
Some assumptions:
-A reasonable amount of time would be given to complete the book (6-9 months)
-The book is expected to be a reasonable number of pages (600)
-There is not an expectation of a full-scale polished application as a by-product. Certainly some smaller things would be developed in the book as examples.
-For people who need it, there would have to be some pay along the way to take care of expenses. I believe this is standard.. 25% of the pay for each 25% of the work submitted.
-They have to be willing to take a "nobody" who can submit a good proposal, samples, etc..
He's why it would work for (someone like) me:
-6-9 months is enough time for me to do it in the evenings/weekends/vacation. Even for me, who knows next to nothing about GNOME (but can program) because it gives me the time to do needed research.
-This last weekend, I wrote a 30 page chapter for a book to be published soon. This particular chapter is on a subject I know well. It took me about 35 hours over the last two days, so obviously I wish I were sleeping right now.. but the point is it can be done. This is the fastest I've been able to get a chapter done so far, so it's an exceptional case. The pay for this chapter was less than $1000, flat-fee, no royalties.
-I already make a pretty good salary at my day job.
So why am I "wasting my time" writing at this pay rate?
-I get to have my name on a book
-I get to learn more (turns out a really good way to learn a subject is to write a book on it)
-It looks good on my resume.
-A little extra cash never hurts.
So, basically, I argue that this wouldn't be a full-time job. However, if any of my assumptions are shot down, that would eliminate someone in my position being able to do it. It may not for others.
P.S. I'm not really buckin for this deal, though it sounds like that.. I've got other projects I'm more interested in writing about.
See, this is why $20K is a pretty generous offer.
It would have been pretty sad if we lost out on the Linux kernel because a paltry $20K wasn't work Linus' time.
>And what are they going to document? Cool, lets
>write docs for buggy code that don't even work >some of the time
And what better way to help get rid of the bugs than documenting the API?
(KDE troll ignored.)
I think your worrying to much about this. Everything will be ok
Well, a programmer good enough to write this book can pull down $80k.
I am assuming that it will take at least three to four months of work to do right, and this is a minimal estimate from what friends who have written full-length books tell me (over a year is more likely for serious books).
Hence just by the straight numbers the FSF is getting a bargain at $20k.
Who says that his flavor of perfectionism and yours would mesh? Perfect is a rather subjective term.
More likely is the case that two anal-retentive perfectionists would want to kill each other in a matter of hours. Better to couple a slacker with a perfectionist - at least then they know who is going to comprimise.
After even writing a medium-sized grad thesis, I can tell you that writing a full, professional book is not to be taken lightly.
Don't even think about it unless you are an experienced programmer and writer.
$20k isn't that much when you consider that it may swallow a huge amount of your time, like all of it.
i think this is a move that is simply giving a recognition to the people who put in the work - kind of a "thank you" -- but it still doesn't pay compared to a regurlar technical writers' salary. $20,000 is about half a years salary for a regular technical writer worth their salt.
that being said however, i think its a good idea - pay up front for development of FREE software, and then make it open.
"i have seen the future, and it is OPEN!"
On one hand, this shows me yet another branch of the well known tree (here in the UK) of make some free-but-sort-of-complicated service on the net && charge users for support. Perhaps at some point we'll all be coding for free but explaining for a lot more!
But on the other hand it drives to the forground of my mind the idea I had the other day:
For me linux is a beautiful thing I just switched to from a previous life on an NT box. I love it so far, but I find it stressful. I have no idea how to do things and even the simplest take me hours. I'm blinded by the beauty of the ideals and the configurability, but I've already grown to hate some cryptic man files and long paths to files I use, although as soon as i figure something out, I then can use it five times more than I could use the same thing on NT's point and click point of view.
So I think a lot of people like me, and you may laugh at us, would be really really into seeing a well designed site, or even magazine, that explained things for people who love without understanding all the bits, and of course to show off new software to the masses of new converts.
Anyone got the server, vocation, time, or economic sense to jump into this new gap in the market?
Or is it already here?
Ale
- There is a market, where demand is, but where the FSF can not yet be.
- Other competitors (== publishers) maybe also see this market and threaten to occupy this market with their own products.
- So the FSF announces a product, that will blow out all competition (they say). The product is fitted with unbelievable specs, but it will hold all potential buyers from commiting to the other products, until they have seen the FSF product.
- Thus, the other competitors products are not selling well or even not selling at all, because of vaporware by the FSF, and the FSF gains time to occupy this market as well.
Before you think that this is far fetched and another mindless attack against RMS, replace FSF by Microsoft (or by IBM, depending on your age) and think how you would then react to such behaviour.-max
Premier argument to install Linux at the workplace - I get paid while waiting for fsck to scan the partitions.
I have a picture in my Dilbert-style cube at work that sums all this up, and I am aware it's all done by true volunteers ...
...
The picture is a small boy on a potty
The caption : 'The Job isn't Finished until the Paperwork is Done'
Once upon a time was an American guy called Richard Stallman. He was the big priest of pure and clean Free Software, and was fighting against the big monsters from a european company - Troll Tech AS - because their graphical toolkit (Qt, which is the base for KDE) was not GPLd.
One upon a time was Red Hat Software Inc., a winning American company selling Linux, which was fighting against the big monsters from a European company, Troll Tech AS, because it was afraid having to pay a tax for Qt in the future.
Once upon a time was an "anti-project", called Gnome, entirely copied on KDE and wishing to kill it. This project was supported and financed by Red Hat Software Inc.
Once upon a time was Richard Stallman, the communist, the extremist, who was supporting Red Hat Software Inc., the worldwide capitalistic company (with investments from Intel and IBM) because it was supporting Gnome and was fighting KDE.
One upon a time was a capitalistic company called Red Hat Software Inc. which just announced IPO.
One upon a time were crowds of blind people, supporting Red Hat and FSF integrists.
Now questions are:
- does the FSF has stock-options in Red Hat Software?
- does Richard the purist use vi instead of emacs (which he has created)?
Gnome financed by the FSF is a shame.
Long live KDE!
Long Live Freedom!