The LDP docs are updated all the time. This list shows how many HOWTOs were updated recently -- about one per day on average.
Some of the docs do apply to old versions of Linux, but there are lots of people still using 2.2 kernels out there. Just check the revision date of any document before you use it, and you should get an idea of whether it will apply to a recent distribution.
Few people are unfamiliar with the phrase The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Rueful, mocking, it often expresses the ordinary person's frustration with the arcana and complexity of law. Sometimes it's known that the saying comes from one of Shakespeare's plays, but usually there's little awareness beyond that. This gap in knowledge has inspired a myth of "correction", where it is "explained" that this is line really intended as a praise of the lawyer's role.
[snip]
As long as there are lawyers, there will be "lawyer jokes". And lawyers will show how those jokes ring true by trying to explain how such lampooning really constitutes praise for their profession, thus by example justifying the jokes more than ever.
This is not the whole truth. There is no question of whether we will publish the document. The question is how it needs to be expanded in order to be a responsible document that helps people defend as much as it helps people potentially attack Linux systems. We are not into the censorship business.
Used Car Salesman vs. Computer Salesman
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 5, Funny
The clueless salesman reminds me of the joke:
Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman?
The most interesting comment raised in the article is the invocation of section 4 of the GPL:
Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
Basically, since the GPL is the only document granting you permission to use the software, violating the GPL revokes your rights under it. That means that if it is found that they violated the GPL (which seems a foregone conclusion if the reporting is accurate), they will no longer be able to distributed MySQL code at all. In other words, put completely out of that business.
Now that is something other companies will take seriously in the future. (IANAL and all that of course.)
We have absolutely no reason to think it won't hold up in court. Have you ever heard of that happening to any other software license, free or not? I haven't. This speculation is all based on the fact that it hasn't been taken to court, not on any question as to its legality.
In fact, the most likely reason it has never been tried in court is because nobody seriously thought they could overturn it, so they complied rather than face what they knew to be a losing court battle.
You're right, some of your criticisms were valid. In the midst of what was a very tiring and stressful day, I took the one egregious comment a little personally. I hope you can understand why, although I am sorry I didn't just let it slide off my back.
I'll now try to just forget the one comment that raised my ire and try to work even harder to address the problems. I hope you and some other Slashdot readers will be willing to roll up your sleeves and help.
I don't think just because something is free means constructive criticisms are invalid. My problem with your post was that I didn't find it constructive. "Pile of poo" is an insult to all of our authors, and it's not true.
The LDP is neither wonderful nor horrible. It is a mixed bag of old documents and new, good documents and poor, well maintained and unmaintained.
If you're sincere about actually helping, even if that's just giving constructive criticism, I would definitely welcome it. But constructive criticism is detailed, just like a good bug report. It's not a generalization about the state of the collection.
There is a reason for this. It's not arbitrary. DocBook lets us produce multiple outputs from pdf to html to RTF. You can extract OMF from it. It's easily integratable into ScrollKeeper.
And while we do expect documents in our collection to be in DocBook, preferably, we know DocBook can be challenging to learn. So we use LinuxDoc as the point-of-entry. It is a simple DTD, about as complex as HTML if not simpler. It is not so high a hurdle.
Also, we provide volunteers to convert your document. You can send it in html or text, we'll convert it, and you maintain it from there. Perhaps you weren't aware of that.
In short, we do everything we can to make getting involved as easy as possible. You don't see people complaining about having to write kernel code in C, do you? "Drat it, why can't they use Python?" Comparatively, we're pretty easy.;-)
Re:Rewrite it, and fix the quality while your at i
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 3
I cordially invite you to help fix the problems you see, or shut the hell up.
It's all very well to say "[t]he LDP is a poor quality pile of poo". We have some documents that probably deserve that fragrant description. But we also publish works good enough for O'Reilly to publish them.
My time spent in the service of the LDP is time spent for *you*, all the Linux users. Our authors don't get paid for their work, and neither does the staff. All we expect is to feel good about what we've accomplished at the end of the day, get an occasional thanks, and maybe the odd beer after a LUG meeting.;-) Not much to ask for the time I've donated. Instead, you whine that it's not good enough? I mean really. I work my ass off for *this*?
The NHF's are often very good, and in many cases better for the newbie user, their audience. The LDP is oriented more toward the system administrator and power user. That's not because we decided to be that, but because that's who is writing. I applaud their work. It isn't a competition.
Then again, there are subjects covered on the LDP that would never make it into a NHF.
Want more end-user docs? Fine, send them in. We'll publish them.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Re:can it be done in practice?
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 4, Informative
We're talking about 412 documents, roughly. Twelve of them are complete books (400-600 pages), some published by O'Reilly and other publishers. It's a *hell* of a lot of documentation.
In printed form, it would take up about 1.5 to 2 feet of shelf space, maybe more.
Maybe so, but I felt pretending I didn't know would be unethical.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Re:The FDL ain't free either
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The LDP has had to throw away, yes THROW AWAY documents that became outdated, when the maintainer could not be contacted. And believe me, that was painful to do.
That is a strong argument in favor of allowing derived versions, not just free distribution. The benefit of licenses which permit derivative versions is that it improves the odds the document will continue to live and be improved as long as it is useful.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Re:"Non-Free" As In "Shut Up"
on
The LDP and Debian
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Oh joy, another SlashDot poster who didn't bother to read the article. Why am I not surprised?
This change (moving non-free LDP documents to the non-free tree of Debian) is happening at *my* request, not Debian's. Regardless of your feelings on Debian's guidelines, I don't see how you can fault them for following their own guidelines.
There is no question whatsoever that the LDP documents in question violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And the DFSG apply to the *entire* distribution, not just software, despite the title.
There is now a list of the documents which are not GFDL or OPL on the LDP website.
I know that some of these are free, not non-free, but I wanted to get the preliminary list up, especially now that this is a SlashDot story. This list is a list of all documents where the license isn't GFDL or OPL, or public domain (only a few LDP documents are under other free licenses).
Also, it doesn't show documents relicensed in the last few days.
That's a good idea, gmhowell. At this time we don't have such a list compiled, although I will get to work on compiling one. If you check on the LDP site, www.linuxdoc.org, I should have it up soon.
Thanks for the good idea.
Anyone who has an immediate concern can find us on #linuxdoc on irc.openprojects.net. I'd be happy to help you out any way I can.
Sure, sounds good. Shall I list you on the "documents in progress" list?
Seriously, though, we welcome contributors. Not only are there gaps in documentation, but there are documents needing new maintainers. Please read the announcement, or join our discussion list at lists.linuxdoc.org and help us out. We would all love for the LDP to be better than it is, but we rely on all of you to make it happen. We are a small coordinating group, and we need authors to help write the documentation.
I can see where this is confusing. What has happened is that there have been several versions of the LDP License, and also a sample "boilerplate" license listed in our manifesto.
Some of them are Free, some are Non-Free.
We are doing our best to get as many documents licensed to suit Debian guidelines as we can. However, the LDP is not a Free project, and we do not require a Free license. We DO want to keep our documents in Debian as much as we possibly can, so I am asking the LDP authors to consider seriously a relicensing in order to do that. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. Allegations to the contrary just show you didn't bother to read the announcement.
Now if I may be permitted a micro-rant...
I'm a volunteer just like the other LDP volunteers, and I give lots of my time trying to create and improve the documentation you all count on. I'm doing my best to deal appropriately with a difficult situation, and I'd appreciate receiving some support for that rather than endless flames and gripes over things I'm not even doing.
I think you're overstating the case a bit. Linux accepted the new VM but so far reports have been pretty good. Yes, there have been some problems, but weren't we having problems with Rik's VM as well?
Linus' philosophy is usually to stick with a simple system a programmer can fully understand. Neat tricks sometimes give better performance, but simple systems are robust and tunable. Selecting right now to add the patch rather than forking off 2.5 and then backporting it doesn't seem very wise to me, but even Linus can make a mistake.
This *is* OT, but it's important, so I'm going to take a moment to give my rant and hope some of you will take it to heart.
It is a constant struggle getting updated documents submitted to the LDP. Up to date documentation matters, and millions of people come to the LDP looking for documents. It just kills me when I find out documents are out of date because the author never bothered to submit to us.
For the record, all HOWTOs should be sent to submit@linuxdoc.org for publication.
Slashdot Mirror
One word:
Gentoo
The LDP docs are updated all the time. This list shows how many HOWTOs were updated recently -- about one per day on average.
Some of the docs do apply to old versions of Linux, but there are lots of people still using 2.2 kernels out there. Just check the revision date of any document before you use it, and you should get an idea of whether it will apply to a recent distribution.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LDP!!!
"Are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do?"
Definitely one for the fortune file.
Bzzt! Wrong. See Seth Finkelstein's excellent analysis of the phrase, which states:
Few people are unfamiliar with the phrase The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Rueful, mocking, it often expresses the ordinary person's frustration with the arcana and complexity of law. Sometimes it's known that the saying comes from one of Shakespeare's plays, but usually there's little awareness beyond that. This gap in knowledge has inspired a myth of "correction", where it is "explained" that this is line really intended as a praise of the lawyer's role.
[snip]
As long as there are lawyers, there will be "lawyer jokes". And lawyers will show how those jokes ring true by trying to explain how such lampooning really constitutes praise for their profession, thus by example justifying the jokes more than ever.
This is not the whole truth. There is no question of whether we will publish the document. The question is how it needs to be expanded in order to be a responsible document that helps people defend as much as it helps people potentially attack Linux systems. We are not into the censorship business.
The clueless salesman reminds me of the joke:
Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.
Basically, since the GPL is the only document granting you permission to use the software, violating the GPL revokes your rights under it. That means that if it is found that they violated the GPL (which seems a foregone conclusion if the reporting is accurate), they will no longer be able to distributed MySQL code at all. In other words, put completely out of that business.
Now that is something other companies will take seriously in the future. (IANAL and all that of course.)
In fact, the most likely reason it has never been tried in court is because nobody seriously thought they could overturn it, so they complied rather than face what they knew to be a losing court battle.
You're right, some of your criticisms were valid. In the midst of what was a very tiring and stressful day, I took the one egregious comment a little personally. I hope you can understand why, although I am sorry I didn't just let it slide off my back.
I'll now try to just forget the one comment that raised my ire and try to work even harder to address the problems. I hope you and some other Slashdot readers will be willing to roll up your sleeves and help.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
I don't think just because something is free means constructive criticisms are invalid. My problem with your post was that I didn't find it constructive. "Pile of poo" is an insult to all of our authors, and it's not true.
The LDP is neither wonderful nor horrible. It is a mixed bag of old documents and new, good documents and poor, well maintained and unmaintained.
If you're sincere about actually helping, even if that's just giving constructive criticism, I would definitely welcome it. But constructive criticism is detailed, just like a good bug report. It's not a generalization about the state of the collection.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator.
There is a reason for this. It's not arbitrary. DocBook lets us produce multiple outputs from pdf to html to RTF. You can extract OMF from it. It's easily integratable into ScrollKeeper.
;-)
And while we do expect documents in our collection to be in DocBook, preferably, we know DocBook can be challenging to learn. So we use LinuxDoc as the point-of-entry. It is a simple DTD, about as complex as HTML if not simpler. It is not so high a hurdle.
Also, we provide volunteers to convert your document. You can send it in html or text, we'll convert it, and you maintain it from there. Perhaps you weren't aware of that.
In short, we do everything we can to make getting involved as easy as possible. You don't see people complaining about having to write kernel code in C, do you? "Drat it, why can't they use Python?" Comparatively, we're pretty easy.
I cordially invite you to help fix the problems you see, or shut the hell up.
;-) Not much to ask for the time I've donated. Instead, you whine that it's not good enough? I mean really. I work my ass off for *this*?
It's all very well to say "[t]he LDP is a poor quality pile of poo". We have some documents that probably deserve that fragrant description. But we also publish works good enough for O'Reilly to publish them.
My time spent in the service of the LDP is time spent for *you*, all the Linux users. Our authors don't get paid for their work, and neither does the staff. All we expect is to feel good about what we've accomplished at the end of the day, get an occasional thanks, and maybe the odd beer after a LUG meeting.
The NHF's are often very good, and in many cases better for the newbie user, their audience. The LDP is oriented more toward the system administrator and power user. That's not because we decided to be that, but because that's who is writing. I applaud their work. It isn't a competition.
Then again, there are subjects covered on the LDP that would never make it into a NHF.
Want more end-user docs? Fine, send them in. We'll publish them.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
We're talking about 412 documents, roughly. Twelve of them are complete books (400-600 pages), some published by O'Reilly and other publishers. It's a *hell* of a lot of documentation.
In printed form, it would take up about 1.5 to 2 feet of shelf space, maybe more.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Maybe so, but I felt pretending I didn't know would be unethical.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
The LDP has had to throw away, yes THROW AWAY documents that became outdated, when the maintainer could not be contacted. And believe me, that was painful to do.
That is a strong argument in favor of allowing derived versions, not just free distribution. The benefit of licenses which permit derivative versions is that it improves the odds the document will continue to live and be improved as long as it is useful.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Oh joy, another SlashDot poster who didn't bother to read the article. Why am I not surprised?
This change (moving non-free LDP documents to the non-free tree of Debian) is happening at *my* request, not Debian's. Regardless of your feelings on Debian's guidelines, I don't see how you can fault them for following their own guidelines.
There is no question whatsoever that the LDP documents in question violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And the DFSG apply to the *entire* distribution, not just software, despite the title.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
There is now a list of the documents which are not GFDL or OPL on the LDP website.
I know that some of these are free, not non-free, but I wanted to get the preliminary list up, especially now that this is a SlashDot story. This list is a list of all documents where the license isn't GFDL or OPL, or public domain (only a few LDP documents are under other free licenses).
Also, it doesn't show documents relicensed in the last few days.
Thanks again for the good idea.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
That's a good idea, gmhowell. At this time we don't have such a list compiled, although I will get to work on compiling one. If you check on the LDP site, www.linuxdoc.org, I should have it up soon.
Thanks for the good idea.
Anyone who has an immediate concern can find us on #linuxdoc on irc.openprojects.net. I'd be happy to help you out any way I can.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Sure, sounds good. Shall I list you on the "documents in progress" list?
Seriously, though, we welcome contributors. Not only are there gaps in documentation, but there are documents needing new maintainers. Please read the announcement, or join our discussion list at lists.linuxdoc.org and help us out. We would all love for the LDP to be better than it is, but we rely on all of you to make it happen. We are a small coordinating group, and we need authors to help write the documentation.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
I can see where this is confusing. What has happened is that there have been several versions of the LDP License, and also a sample "boilerplate" license listed in our manifesto.
:-)
Some of them are Free, some are Non-Free.
We are doing our best to get as many documents licensed to suit Debian guidelines as we can. However, the LDP is not a Free project, and we do not require a Free license. We DO want to keep our documents in Debian as much as we possibly can, so I am asking the LDP authors to consider seriously a relicensing in order to do that. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. Allegations to the contrary just show you didn't bother to read the announcement.
Now if I may be permitted a micro-rant...
I'm a volunteer just like the other LDP volunteers, and I give lots of my time trying to create and improve the documentation you all count on. I'm doing my best to deal appropriately with a difficult situation, and I'd appreciate receiving some support for that rather than endless flames and gripes over things I'm not even doing.
And Flower, that isn't directed at you.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
Sorry, you're incorrect. They are being moved into non-free, not being dropped.
David Merrill,
LDP Collection Coordinator
I think you're overstating the case a bit. Linux accepted the new VM but so far reports have been pretty good. Yes, there have been some problems, but weren't we having problems with Rik's VM as well?
Linus' philosophy is usually to stick with a simple system a programmer can fully understand. Neat tricks sometimes give better performance, but simple systems are robust and tunable. Selecting right now to add the patch rather than forking off 2.5 and then backporting it doesn't seem very wise to me, but even Linus can make a mistake.
This is clearly the fault of just one PROGRAMMER.
Does your boss see all the code you write, and if s/he did would s/he recognize BSD ATA code? Mine sure wouldn't.
This *is* OT, but it's important, so I'm going to take a moment to give my rant and hope some of you will take it to heart.
;-)
It is a constant struggle getting updated documents submitted to the LDP. Up to date documentation matters, and millions of people come to the LDP looking for documents. It just kills me when I find out documents are out of date because the author never bothered to submit to us.
For the record, all HOWTOs should be sent to submit@linuxdoc.org for publication.
End Rant.
David Merrill
Linux Documentation Project
There is a really good XML reference on iBiblio called Cafe con Leche.