On Tue, 2011-08-02 at 08:03 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: > On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 10:38 PM, Jean Hollis Weber <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Mon, 2011-08-01 at 21:24 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: > >> I'd look at it like this: The documentation that is needed for our > >> users to be successful with our product, from end users, to admins, to > >> application developers, that documentation is product documentation. > >> If having it deleted or defaced, without us noticing it, would cause > >> our users some harm, then it is product documentation. If the right > >> to copy, modify and redistribute the documentation is essentially to > >> successful creating and hosting a new port or translation, or even a > >> commercial derivative or an open source fork, of the project, then it > >> is product documentation. > > > > Leaving aside for the moment all the other user-doc type items on the > > wiki, and looking specifically at the existing current set of user > > guides (which are in ODT/PDF format, but made available for download > > from the existing OOo wiki), I'm unclear how they will fit into this. > > They are not currently under the Apache license, and we would never be > > able to track down all the contributors to get them to agree to the > > license and/or sign the iCLA. So are we talking only about future > > updates to these docs? And if so, do you mean that every future > > contributor to these guides during their production must sign the iCLA? > > Or just that only someone with suitable access rights (committer?) can > > put them on the wiki (in ODT/PDF format)? Or something else? > > > > I'd like us to treat documentation like we do code. Not necessarily > the same tools, but the same care for provenance, accountability and > quality, namely: > > 1) We welcome "patches" and "contributions" from anyone, but these > must be first reviewed and approved by a project committer before they > become part of the documentation set. Any such contributions must be > made under Apache 2.0 license. > > 2) Only project committers have direct write access to the > documentation. This requires that they first sign the iCLA. > > 3) All contributions, whether from the public or from committers and > tracked/logged, so we can accurately determine who made a given > change. So no anonymous or pseudonymous patches. A user id that we > can trace to a real email address is fine. > > With code this works by non-committer contributors sending patches > (diffs) to the mailing list, where they are merged in and reviewed by > a committer, and then checked into the repository. With > documentation, using a wiki , we would need a different mechanism for > achieving this. Luckily there are MediaWiki extensions to enable > this. > > I'd like to preserve the immediate nature of editing on the wiki. > That is its strength. But we need to find away to also get this under > project oversight as well. I think we can do both, without too much > annoyance to contributors.
As far as I can tell, you are talking about direct edits to the wiki. That is not what I asked about. --Jean
