Something else that badly needs DVCS: government documents including legislation. But I'm preaching to the choir.
Why stop at DVCS?: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/objectivity.html
The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#42There's no need to wait for central blessing. Just do it. It wouldn't take much scripting work to treat the existing PG as just another branch that you can periodically merge on to your trunk. And if they decide they like it, they can switch to it easily later.
My thoughts exactly. The whole library is available as a torrent. Why ask if its okay when asking is not even necessary.
How to be more awesome: do cool stuff for people without needing them to hold your hand.
Re: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the author of TFA and I must completely agree with you on this point. Is there a human-friendly VCS out there? I don't care how featured or not it is, as Git can be configured to pull from it (a la git-svn). Just anything that non-tech-related persons (or even just non-coders!) can use without wanting to pull their hair out and feeling very stupid? For example, one of my software products has translations powered…
Something like Github's "forking with the edit button"[1] functionality would be perfect for this. If you want to make a correction, press a button to see the content you were looking at in a web-based editor. Make your changes, and add your email address to a notification field. Changes go into an approval queue, and you get an email if/when your change goes live. No need to expose the casual user to the perils of D…
Indeed, I've been working on this type of tool (without the distributed component) for blog authors who want user-submitted corrections: http://edithuddle.com
When you want a central, de-facto version, it makes sense to have a way of aggregating "similar" corrections (both in type and content) from changes.
Re: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#44I think this is a great idea in general. As an aside, when I first discovered Project Gutenberg I thought it was really exciting, but as I've grown up my perspective has changed: it feels like a desperate attempt to scrape together something like what used to be recognizable as culture from cast-off bits of art that capitalism can no longer commodify. Same with FLOSS and Creative Commons. They are at the same time wo…
I think your view may be just a little more cynical than reality. I'm not saying reality isn't bad (it is), but, in the little bit of "free" blue ocean that exists, incredibly vibrant communities are thriving. Whether that is people share truly open photos on Flickr or entire operating systems being built and given away or authors and musicians providing their content to the community, there is still life in non-corporate-controlled culture.
(And, FWIW, I'm truly cynical about our corporate overlords.)
Re: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the author of TFA and I must completely agree with you on this point. Is there a human-friendly VCS out there? I don't care how featured or not it is, as Git can be configured to pull from it (a la git-svn). Just anything that non-tech-related persons (or even just non-coders!) can use without wanting to pull their hair out and feeling very stupid? For example, one of my software products has translations powered…
Mercurial (Hg) with TortoiseHg might be a good option. You could even create a pre-configured PG version, to make it even easier for novices. Along with a guide on the basics, I think that could end up working quite well. Hg also has the benefit, compared to Git, of being strictly cross-platform.
I think Mercurial (and Git) is ridiculously complex for a non-technical user (say, my mother, who has helped with translation projects online, using Word + email). TortoiseHg is great as a GUI version, but it doesn't effectively reduce the complexity - you still need to understand the basic concepts of a DVCS to use it.
In graph, they'd be like:
|--|------------------------------|-------------------------------|
git hg wiki actually usable
by non-techiesRe: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Let's do something about our shared cultural history. Email is also in my profile.
Wow. @ComputerGuru, SoftwareMaven, dankin I will contact you via mail in a bit. Do you have experience in managing the level of discussion needed to get this right? What would be best? A public mailing list? https://github.com/felix-faber/project-alexandria Feedback very welcome.
signed up for troutwine's mailing list too
Re: The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mercurial (Hg) with TortoiseHg might be a good option. You could even create a pre-configured PG version, to make it even easier for novices. Along with a guide on the basics, I think that could end up working quite well. Hg also has the benefit, compared to Git, of being strictly cross-platform.
I think Mercurial (and Git) is ridiculously complex for a non-technical user (say, my mother, who has helped with translation projects online, using Word + email). TortoiseHg is great as a GUI version, but it doesn't effectively reduce the complexity - you still need to understand the basic concepts of a DVCS to use it. In graph, they'd be like: |--|------------------------------|-------------------------------| git…
Completely agree, but with this limited use case it should be easy to provide a tool to abstract away the complexity and give them easy access to the very few features they need.