Ian Laurenson wrote:
On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 17:09 -0800, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
[snip]
Ian, may I ask whether you object to the publication of the
books, or to the fact that they are being sold at a profit
instead of at cost, or is your objection only to the way I
handled the publication?
I acknowledge the legal right to publish the work and sell it.
Yes, always a sticky point after I, (umm, I mean you) have spent all of
this time writing materials that I might have liked to have profitted from.
My concern was about the process and the long term effect on the
community. If I had known that a member of the community that has acted
in a leading role was to act in such a unilateral fashion I would not
have joined the group and contributed the material that I had written.
Ian, I thought that we had discussed this on the list list. By "we", I
mean that I thought that I had seen discussions on this. By "thought", I
mean that I might be mistaken. By "discussed", I do not specifically
remember a discussion on profit. I do remember a specific discussion on
at least one document that was available from the site as a printed copy
as having all proceedes donated back to the web site. I believe that
this discussion was by telephone with G. R. Singleton some months back.
In other words, when I saw Jean's announcement, I thought that she was
simply doing for these new documents what had already been done with at
least one other. I need to smack my head against the wall for a bit and
try to remember which document it was. It was available in mono or
color. I think that it was the old user's guide and one or two other
documents. I think that there was also discussion directly on the
mailing list, but I receive so many emails that I can not remember what
came from where sometimes.
While I personally would have objected to a proposal to enact what you
have done, if the majority of the community thought the proposal a good
idea I would have accepted the community view.
Ian, I understand your objection to a person acting "unilaterally". If I
felt that Jean had done this entirely on her own, it would have bothered
me, but based on past converstaions with others on the list, my only
surprise was that it was for something other than the entire user's
guide. Now, go ahead and ask me what the profit margin is. It does annoy
me just a tad that I have no idea what the answer is, but only a tad.
I suggest that a discussion about printing and proceeds from selling
printed copies could be useful.
I agree, primarily because I do not remember what we discussed before so
I do not remember which details were discussed. I could probably go back
and find out and figure out what details are left. It would be useful,
perhaps, to understand what we will do with the final proceeds and then
determine how much of a profit to have. In other words, if we intend to
do nothing with the profits, then we should not bother making them.
My personal view is that now that there is an official OOo wiki:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Main_Page
OOoAuthors should move to this wiki and OOoAuthors be reunited with the
documentation team.
Time for me to reveal my ignorance (I apologize ahead of time)
Although I like the wiki thing, I am not exactly certain how a wiki can
replace the documentation. Let me rephrase.... When I think about a
WIKI, I think "Hey, I can figure out how to solve this particular
problem". When I think of documentation, I think "Hey, I can start at
the beginning and figure out how to use this entire thing in an
organized and structured format." I see much of my free macro document
as a good candidate for a WIKI. I suppose that properly done, a complete
macro could be created from the WIKI. Then again, I know so little about
them, that I could be wrong. My guess is that a documentation portion
would be added to the existing WIKI. I would be very sad if we lost the
documents, however, unless I could download the WIKI and use it offline.
My Mother would probably never use a WIKI unless she could print it out
and take it with her.
One final note. Jean and Ian, I have a lot of respect for both of you
for many reasons. I have developed this respect over the years. Thank
you for the civil discourse!
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
My Book: http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/oome.htm
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
See Also: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html
