On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 23:02, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > > Wearing my IBM hat, the larger issue, one that may not concern > everyone here but does concern me, is the impact the license choice > has on our ability to attract corporate-sponsored contributors to an > effort that is not using a compatible license, By analogy to the > project source code,under Apache 2.0, it is very easy for IBM > developers to contribute patches, etc., to that code. We contribute > and know that we improve the product as well as preserve our ability > to bring that code, with our fixes and other's fixes as well, and > include that in Symphony releases. Once we start mixing copyleft > components into the mix, even documentation components, we make it > much more difficult for risk-averse corporations to contribute. > > So this is a matter of "help me help you". If we can move to a > permissive/compatible license for future documentation work, then I > can seek contributions of Symphony-related documentations, quick > starts, as well help with existing doc. (In fact I've already started > that discussion internally at IBM, with favorable feedback). Having a > compatible license helps align our interests. > > [...] > > Long term, the ideal from my perspective is for ODFAuthors to become > part of the AOOo project, have their own ooo-doc/ooo-docs/ooo-infodev > mailing list, agree to move to ALv2 for future contributions, and > produce docs that because of that license choice can be used freely, > by AOOo, by LibreOffice, Symphony, even freely translated for > RedOffice, etc. Such an arrangement also makes it easier for others > to contribute as well, for the reasons I mentioned above. >
One thing that has not been addressed specifically in any of these discussions about documentation, but which I suspect will come up at some point, is documentation version control in one or more of its incarnations. Some of these involve change tracking at a level of detail that I find too tedious to want to deal with. I know that corporations often need to do this for some reason that I've long forgotten (some ISO certification, I think), so I don't object to its being done... but *I* don't want to be bothered. I hated dealing with all that when I was being paid, and I for sure am not going to deal with it when I'm not being paid. Just sayin'. --Jean
