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Introducing Open Web Docs

opencollective.com

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Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#41

Post by bryanrasmussen »

StavrosK wrote: post #34
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so did they actually donate or did they pay the monetization amount that their algorithm determined MDN should have?

Pretty sure they donated, no need to doubt the donation like that.

Ok, I wasn't necessarily doubting the donation. I thought though that if they didn't donate but gave the money that their algorithm determined that it would be an interesting thing for several reasons:

1. would show coil is getting quite a bit of money.

2. would show importance of MDN.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#42

Post by StavrosK »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #41
StavrosK wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they donated, no need to doubt the donation like that.

Ok, I wasn't necessarily doubting the donation. I thought though that if they didn't donate but gave the money that their algorithm determined that it would be an interesting thing for several reasons: 1. would show coil is getting quite a bit of money. 2. would show importance of MDN.

Ah, yeah, I don't think that many people have the extension installed yet, but I can see them not requiring big sites to add a monetization header and just sending the money to them instead.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#43

Post by rini17 »

arrayjumper wrote: post #4

Wow, was checking out the transactions at https://opencollective.com/open-web-docs/transactions?offset... and I see that Google and Microsoft have collectively contributed $500k. Happy to see that there is corporate sponsorship for this. Gives me some hope that this will allow MDN to outlast any eventuality that might befall Mozilla.

Not much to be happy about here. The "Living standard" ensures that independent browser implementation from scratch is impossible. Even not from scratch, see MS Edge.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#44

Post by chrisdavidmills »

pm90 wrote: post #5

Hmm, can someone TLDR what this is supposed to be? I did read the article but I didn't understand what this is trying to do. It just mentions something about the "collective health of something".

I can try to clear this up (full disclosure: I work on the MDN team at Mozilla).

Last year our team was downsized by a little below 50%. Most of the losses were in the writer's team. We only lost one engineer.

As a result, our writing output was considerably smaller. To mitigate this, we did two things:

1. Mozilla hired some contractors to help keep the continuous web platform documentation updates happening, so MDN does not become out of date.

2. Mozilla plus Google, Microsoft, Samsung, W3C, Coil, and other supporters worked together to create Open Web Docs, which provides funding to hire more full-time writing staff to help MDN content keep getting better.

Step 1 was really just getting MDN out of trouble, and back to stability. Step 2 is about letting us go further and start evolving MDN's content.

MDN is staying inside Mozilla; we still contribute a lot to MDN in terms of engineering, infrastructure, and writing costs. It is just that we now have OWD contributing to writing costs as well, to help safeguard the content.

This is a good thing — it allows all the interested orgs to get together and agree on future content directions for MDN together, rather than just working away on it in our own little pockets. And we'll be developing a shared process to follow to make sure that all work is going in the right direction.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#45

Post by ahopebailie »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #40
input_sh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a small Coil, who you've probably never heard of before, donated 40% of Google's/Microsoft's amount ($100k). That's pennies to Google/Microsoft. For Coil.com on the other hand... For the unaware, Coil is a subscription service that you pay a certain amount to, and that amount gets spread through websites you visit that have a WebMonetization tag in the element: Pretty cool initiative. My personal website earned a…

I've come across this before. In order to receive money, I should just be able to put: Or similar, on my website. Doesn't work that way though. I have to sign up with somebody like coil.com and put an address they give me on my websites. This is just worse. Much much worse than it needs to be.

That's where the idea started but that means the user has to be able to send Bitcoin. The purpose of Interledger is to abstract away that issue which is why Web Monetization is built on Interledger.

You don't have to sign up with Coil to earn. There are other wallets that are on the Interledger network such as Uphold and Gatehub that can give you a payment pointer to put into your site's HTML. If you want your earnings to be converted to BTC that's possible I think.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#46

Post by ahopebailie »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #23
input_sh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a small Coil, who you've probably never heard of before, donated 40% of Google's/Microsoft's amount ($100k). That's pennies to Google/Microsoft. For Coil.com on the other hand... For the unaware, Coil is a subscription service that you pay a certain amount to, and that amount gets spread through websites you visit that have a WebMonetization tag in the element: Pretty cool initiative. My personal website earned a…

so did they actually donate or did they pay the monetization amount that their algorithm determined MDN should have?

This was a straight donation. A thriving Web ecosystem of independent developers and creators building and hosting their own content is what gets us out of bed in the morning.

Credit to Ali Spivak who kicked this all off and helped us realise what a crucial role good platform documentation plays and how important it is to fund good knowledgeable writers.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#47

Post by ahopebailie »

StavrosK wrote: post #42
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I wasn't necessarily doubting the donation. I thought though that if they didn't donate but gave the money that their algorithm determined that it would be an interesting thing for several reasons: 1. would show coil is getting quite a bit of money. 2. would show importance of MDN.

Ah, yeah, I don't think that many people have the extension installed yet, but I can see them not requiring big sites to add a monetization header and just sending the money to them instead.

We're working to make the Web Monetization API a standard that browsers can adopt natively: https://webmonetization.org

The extension helps us bootstrap the ecosystem but a native integration is far superior. Check out Puma browser for an example of the integrated experience for mobile.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#48

Post by jimmont »

teruakohatu wrote: post #22

I don't understand why Mozilla cannot see that MDN should be part of their core mission. I can understand spinning off Thunderbird and Sunbird, but this really seems a big step in the wrong direction. Today their Mission webpage[1] states : "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." According to the Wayback Machine, 8 years ago that page[2] said: "Our mission is t…

Can you explain what makes this seem to be out of sync with this mission focus as you've emphasized? My read of this is their interest in expanding the existing effort somehow, focused initially on MDN. Separate from this doc effort I've wondered why Mozilla hasn't emphasized business opportunities around communications like VPN services, etc until recently as it overlaps with their mission, expertise and appears to be a legitimate business opportunity at scale. It's not my area of knowledge, only a speculation from some observation.

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#49

Post by sradman »

Microsoft's description of the project [1]:

> Open Web Docs, a new collective which is dedicated to sustainably supporting high-quality, browser-agnostic, community-driven web developer documentation. Open Web Docs employs full-time writing staff to support the development and maintenance of web developer documentation, independent of any one vendor or organization.

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2021/01/25/welcome-open-...

Re: Introducing Open Web Docs

#50

Post by wegs »

jimmont wrote: post #48
teruakohatu wrote: post #22

I don't understand why Mozilla cannot see that MDN should be part of their core mission. I can understand spinning off Thunderbird and Sunbird, but this really seems a big step in the wrong direction. Today their Mission webpage[1] states : "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." According to the Wayback Machine, 8 years ago that page[2] said: "Our mission is t…

Can you explain what makes this seem to be out of sync with this mission focus as you've emphasized? My read of this is their interest in expanding the existing effort somehow, focused initially on MDN. Separate from this doc effort I've wondered why Mozilla hasn't emphasized business opportunities around communications like VPN services, etc until recently as it overlaps with their mission, expertise and appears to…

I kinda feel like there ought to be some coherent effort to archive all this documentation, beyond archive.org (perhaps in collaboration with?).

Good developer docs have source code, and are often interactive (you can play with code in a sandbox). Much of that stuff is either on personal web sites and blogs (often with unknown licensing) or behind corporate paywalls.

There ought to be a place this stuff goes, and is forever archived, searchable, and usable.

I'd actually extend that beyond software too. Educational materials. Service manuals for my car or vacuum cleaner. There's lots of stuff which ought to live forever for the benefit of humanity. And perhaps software itself. I ought to be able to pull up Netscape 2.0 or Flash and run it in a sandbox.

Archive.org is designed to archive everything on the web. I'm thinking something thoughtful and deliberate where people (even paying for it) stick content into a permanent archive. If I'm running a startup, and I'd like to give you a guarantee of long-term support, I stick my support materials there, and they can outlast me.

Hmmm... That was a bit rambling and not too crisp, but perhaps someone can think of ways to make it crisp?

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