Where's the GNU grant program to help fund the time it takes to write a good manual for something, then? Complete with people whose job at least partially involves finding folks who have had something worthwhile to say about a program, and convincing them that they want to spend the next few months of their lives expanding it into Serious Documentation?
Free software needs free documentation
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#12> The authors of the good manuals had written them for O'Reilly Associates, I see the bar is relatively... low. That being said, I expect the reason authors wrote for O'Reilly was so they could actually get paid. > The obstacle is that many users think that a proprietary manual is good enough—so they don't see the need to write a free manual. They do not see that the free operating system has a gap that needs filling…
I think you may have missed this part: >The problem with these manuals was not that O'Reilly Associates charged a price for printed copies—that in itself is fine.
If you’re saying people need to make their content available for free with an option to pay for a printed copy, then you’re telling them they can’t make money from their work, which is the thing at issue.
And we can argue about whether authors of books about FOSS tools should embrace the same ethos as those tools’ developers, but it seems silly to hide the ball or act like there’s a win-win solution hiding in plain sight.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#13> The authors of the good manuals had written them for O'Reilly Associates, I see the bar is relatively... low. That being said, I expect the reason authors wrote for O'Reilly was so they could actually get paid. > The obstacle is that many users think that a proprietary manual is good enough—so they don't see the need to write a free manual. They do not see that the free operating system has a gap that needs filling…
The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have”
O’Reilly would be fine, if they allowed you to modify the book as you please — but they don’t; like licensed software, you’ve only paid to access the content, but you don’t really own it.
Basically every argument for FOSS is now being applied to the manual(s) as well
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#14”[...] The issues for writings are not necessarily the same as those for software. For example, I don't think you or I are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our views. But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the software, and add or change its features…
very reasonable.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may have missed this part: >The problem with these manuals was not that O'Reilly Associates charged a price for printed copies—that in itself is fine.
If you’re saying people need to make their content available for free with an option to pay for a printed copy, then you’re telling them they can’t make money from their work, which is the thing at issue. And we can argue about whether authors of books about FOSS tools should embrace the same ethos as those tools’ developers, but it seems silly to hide the ball or act like there’s a win-win solution hiding in plain s…
I think what's being pointed out is more just a problem, no concrete solution (like "make their content available for free with an option to pay for a printed copy") is being prescribed.
But if we are talking about prescriptive solutions, what I'd want that does all this is a pay-to-access documentation Wiki, where I and other users of the software can make changes (or at least propose changes) to those docs that we read and rely on.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may have missed this part: >The problem with these manuals was not that O'Reilly Associates charged a price for printed copies—that in itself is fine.
If you’re saying people need to make their content available for free with an option to pay for a printed copy, then you’re telling them they can’t make money from their work, which is the thing at issue. And we can argue about whether authors of books about FOSS tools should embrace the same ethos as those tools’ developers, but it seems silly to hide the ball or act like there’s a win-win solution hiding in plain s…
I'm not saying that and the article doesn't say that either. If anything it says the opposite, but the real focus of is asking for documentation writers to publish their source files. (odt/doc files, latex/rst/md sources, etc...) My personal opinion is that open source projects should probably do this, when a project is taking patches to the source and contributors can't also contribute to the docs then the docs will lag behind.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#17Kinda ironic that the GFDL isn't even considered a free license by Debian, at least when invariant sections are included.
Invariant sections aren't free, surely?
Certainly not; invariant sections have the effect of limiting what modifications can be made to the work.
The GFDL also places some weird restrictions on storage and distribution of the licensed work -- notably, it forbids the use of any "technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute". Depending on how strictly you read this, this could be interpreted as forbidding the use of encryption on filesystems containing GFDL documentation.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#18> The authors of the good manuals had written them for O'Reilly Associates, I see the bar is relatively... low. That being said, I expect the reason authors wrote for O'Reilly was so they could actually get paid. > The obstacle is that many users think that a proprietary manual is good enough—so they don't see the need to write a free manual. They do not see that the free operating system has a gap that needs filling…
The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have” O’Reilly would be fine, if they allowed you to modify the book as you please — but they don’t; like licensed software, you’ve only paid to access the content, but you don’t really own it. Basically every argument for FOSS is now being applied to the manual(s) as well
We really need an AGPL3 for documentation. If you read that documentation and then provide (consulting) services based on that knowledge, you really need to feed the profits back to the documentation authors.
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#19> The authors of the good manuals had written them for O'Reilly Associates, I see the bar is relatively... low. That being said, I expect the reason authors wrote for O'Reilly was so they could actually get paid. > The obstacle is that many users think that a proprietary manual is good enough—so they don't see the need to write a free manual. They do not see that the free operating system has a gap that needs filling…
The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have” O’Reilly would be fine, if they allowed you to modify the book as you please — but they don’t; like licensed software, you’ve only paid to access the content, but you don’t really own it. Basically every argument for FOSS is now being applied to the manual(s) as well
> The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have”
If O'Reilly were to sell books on those terms, say in PDF+source form, what exactly would prevent "freedom to copy... and redistribute" from quickly turning into "free to have?"
Re: Free software needs free documentation
#20I'm confused by this. Which free software has its documentation in a proprietary book? A textbook is not documentation². ROS, PyTorch, Tensorflow, Julia, Python, Emacs, you name it, all have free online documentation as well as non-free textbooks to learn those tools. Not sure about non-programming tools like Gimp or Blender. If the only way to learn how your software works is a print book, that's the issue, not the fact that this textbook is non-free.
²To me, documentation is a boring but exhaustive description of all the features in your software. A textbook is a nice introduction to the software in a linear fashion which doesn't necessarily aim to tell the whole story. After going through the textbook the user should be comfortable enough to look at the doc for the complete story.
It's ok to want to profit from publishing a textbook for free software IMHO, just as you can build a consultancy on free software (see Red Hat, Savoir-faire Linux). It's merely charging for your expertise and time. Somehow saying that these book should be made available for free online takes away from that. Doesn't matter if you say that it's ok to pay for the print version.