Janet M. Swisher wrote:
Ian Laurenson wrote:
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 10:54 +0000, Daniel Carrera wrote:
[snip]
Someone might. But consider that the OOo council has already talked
about telling OOoAuthors to move. They thought of it. It seems wrong
to say to someone "you can't use our list anymore" and when they
move then say "see, they betrayed us!".
I feel betrayed by OOoAuthors!
My interpretation of what the OOo council is saying is "if the
OOoAuthors leaders keep betraying the OOo community then we will have to
take what steps we can to distance ourselves from OOoAuthors". To me
this is a perfectly reasonable stance.
It has been suggested that the printing of the books was discussed prior
to printing but no one has been able to point to archived messages of
that discussion.
I spent about half an hour searching the archives, and came up with
following links. I think the idea of selling printed books seemed so
natural and obvious that it never generated much discussion, much less
controversy. Once it came up, everybody just assumed that it would
eventually happen.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=4603>
19-Nov-04 Daniel mentions Lulu.com as POD vendor for open source
books, not specifically OOoAuthors guides.
Also in the same thread:
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=4630>
20-Nov-04 Jacqueline McNally mentions that Lulu was used for the
OOo Strategic Marketing Plan.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=4639>
19-Nov-04 Jonathan Blake suggests publishing the Users Guide on
Lulu, and indicates he plans to publish _OOo in a Multi-Lingual
Environment_ there also.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=4655>
20-Nov-04 Linda Worthington me-toos that idea.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgId=1769710>
11-Feb-05 Jean mentions planning to have printed books (not
specifically selling them).
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6248>
24-Feb-05 Jean mentions selling printed copies of the GSG and other
guides.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgId=1879126>
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgId=1879153>
12-Mar-05 Daniel mentions the ability to sell books, in a discussion
of license options, as a reason for using the dual license we
eventually settled on.
<http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgId=1981407>
02-May-05 Jean mentions planning to sell printed books.
It has also been suggested that the rationale for changing the mailing
list server is a technical one. Yes the OOo mail server was slow last
week, and has been on a few other occasions as well. To the best of my
knowledge this has been due to problems with circulating viruses. Can
anybody guarantee that the new server won't have issues with viruses and
needing to act prudently to prevent their spread?
Certainly, nobody can guarantee anything when it comes to viruses. As
I mentioned before, the server hosts at least two other
open-source-community mailing lists of comparable size, currently with
good performance. Virus and spam protections are in place. I can get
further details on this if there is sufficient interest. Probably the
fact that this server handles only a few mailing lists (whereas
openoffice.org handles a great many) contributes to its better
performance. I do not forsee the number of mailing lists on that
server proliferating to the level of openoffice.org.
Viruses, like the one causing so much slow down around the world right
now, are spread when someone clicks a zip file from an unknown sender,
infects their system and then the virus spreads to everyone in their
address book. Most mailing lists have some form of protection in place
but some of this has to fall on users as well. No one, including your
ISP provider can guarantee you will not receive an infected file. The
best way to ward off this problem is to ensure the mailing list does not
allow attachments.
As for selling the books, I have no problem with this. It was mentioned
on the list and the money is going to help Authors which in turn helps
OOo. Are we all not moving towards the same goal of spreading the word
about OOo and supply as much documentation as possible to help those
trying to transition to OOo?
Is it really a big deal if I find a group of people in my town and we
build a website, create documentation, sell the documentation so we can
attend expo's to help OOo? Or use the money to travel to schools to
speak about OOo and give presentations? Am I not trying to help OOo? I
don't see what OOoAuthors is doing as anything different from this.
As for OOoAuthor leaders I didn't know we had any. I thought we were all
a group with the same goal. We didn't vote in any type of leadership
that I know of. We just have some members that are more active than
others but that doesn't make anyone a "leader" in my book. I appreciate
everyone's time regardless of reviewing one paragraph or 12 chapters.
Linda
