discuss: Proposing some new HOWTOs
Subject:
Re: Proposing some new HOWTOs
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
30 Sep 2001 22:01:18 -0000
Message-Id: <20010930150111.A161@lafn.org>
> > > Would the LDP be interested in assisting on a pan-Unix documentation
> > > effort? While there are certainly documents that are specific to an OS
> > > (tuning, kernel configuration, that sort of thing) there are many that
> > > aren't, or that have only a few sections that are OS specific.
> >
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 06:01:35PM -0400, David Merrill wrote:
> > As I said elsewhere, and as Josh has indicated by his opinions, there
> > would be resistance to a single organization, and I agree with him
> > that we do not want for us or any project to give up their identities,
> > because we each have our own audiences whose needs we serve.
> >
> > However, what about an umbrella organization, which would include
> > representatives of all the groups? IMHO it is coordination,
> > duplication of work, and standardization of formats and usages of
> > DocBook that are most important.
>
This has been hashed over before. The defunct OSWG was in a sense
an umbrella organization. But someone proposed an ODE (Open
Documentation Environment) as an umbrella organization in Jan. 2000.
This started a long thread with many cross-postings.
It even started an ode-discuss mailing list (compliments of OSWG)
which I didn't follow. I assumed that it was being archived and that
I could always read it over later from the archives. Anyone know
where to find it? On 9 Jan. 2000 Deb Richardson said it would be
archived at www.oswg.org/archives/ode-discuss. I can't get to it. If
it can be found it may be of some help in developing brainstorming
ideas. I did save a litlle of the list when it first got started.
Here's a little of what Deb Richardson (the former leader of OSWG) had
to say about an "umbrella group":
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[snips in header]
To: ####@####.####
CC: linuxkb-discuss ####@####.####
gnome-doc-list ####@####.####
ldp-discuss ####@####.####
osrt ####@####.####
Subject: Re: [oswg-dis] Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)
[snip]
To be honest, I am unconvinced that creating an "umbrella group" such as
this is necessary, or even that it's a good idea. Open Source and
related projects work because they tend to not be monolithic, their
infrastructures are usually simple and make use of well-known
technologies, and there is little implication of there being a hierarchy
of people and projects.
On the other hand, I do feel that developing a set of standards for Open
Source and Open Content documentation could be extremely useful. Having
a commonly used set of standards would be very powerful. But creating a
new organization for the development and maintenance of these standards
is much more complicated (both practically and politically) than folks
might suspect.
If we are going to work towards the development of a set of standards
for Linux documentation (which seems to be the gist of the discussion so
far -- the FreeBSD and other folks are being left out at this point), I
think we should develop these standards in cooperation with an existing
group, such as the Linux Standard Base.
[snip]
--------------------------------end---quote-----------------------------
Note that the Linux Knowledge Base (www.linuxkb.org) group is also now
defunct (along with ODE and OSWG).
David Lawyer
