It is good to hear thoughtful discussion on this matter.
I can well appreciate the dilemma Ceki faces. Right now the work he does on
log4j is long on glory and short on remuneration. Glory is a very low
calorie diet.
On the other hand, I agree that gutting the documentation which is
distributed with log4j would detract greatly from its appeal/value/uptake
and so forth. In particular, limiting the distributed documentation to just
the Javadocs would be a disaster because critical information such as the
content of configuration files and the conceptual approach would be lost.
I have mixed feelings about the notion of a ordinary book. Books are
disprortionately costly -- in the sense that a small proportion of the
retail cost goes to the author. Moreover, in our world, they have a very
short half life.
Let me suggest something which I would find comfortable.
* Reasonable ->reference<- documentation is part of log4j
* Ceki writes a comprehensive expository document which explains the
whys and wherefors of log4j, how best to use it and so forth
* Ceki makes his book available online in a PDF (or like format)
* Honourable people pay Ceki online via credit card
The advantages of this are:
* all the money goes to the author
* the cost is probably less than for a bound book
* it is easier to keep the book up to date
True, people can print many copies of the PDF and pass around copies of it.
People also photocopy all or portions of bound books.
Comments?
Burton
-----Original Message-----
From: Ceki Gülcü [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:06 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [POLL] Commercial documentation
Hi All,
I am pondering whether it is possible to earn revenue by offering
log4j documentation online, a bit like what JBoss is trying to
do. Needless to say, the log4j API (the software) will always be
licensed under the Apache Software license and would include some
basic documentation. However, writing good documentation is very time
consuming and I'd like to see if I can get paid to do it.
This documentation will be based on the long log4j manual which was
until recently part of log4j 1.2 alpha3, alpha4 and alpha5. However,
the latest alpha6 does not include it. This document carried a clearly
visible copyright notice. It was always copyrighted by me and not the
ASF.
Do you think this is an honorable approach? Your comments on the
subject are welcome. Thank you.
--
Ceki Gülcü - http://qos.ch
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