discuss: Proposed: announcement of anniversary
Subject:
Proposed: announcement of anniversary
From:
Stein Gjoen ####@####.####
Date:
25 Aug 2003 22:10:11 -0000
Message-Id: <3F413DF5.7060103@mail.nyx.net>
The Linux Documentation Project is 10 years old and a proposed
announcement text has been dicussed on the staff list. After minor
editing it is ready for your comments, and when it is finished we plan
on distributing this a number of places such as Linux Weekly News,
Slashdot and more.
All comments and suggestions regarding the text itself as well as
where to post it are welcome.
Regards,
Stein Gjoen
The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is happy to announce its 10 year
anniversary!
Once upon a time there was a general consensus that Unix in general and
Linux in particular lacked good documentation. Matt Welsh
decided to do something about this and wrote the first Linux HOWTO, the
first of what was going to be a long series of focused, solution oriented
documents. It became a movement just like Linux itself, more and more
people joined in on the effort, tools were wrought and documents written,
translated and published.
Ten years later it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt
with, thoroughly: TLDP today is one of the largest Internet projects
where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, from
small manual pages to in depth guides that span over a hundred pages,
covering nearly all aspects of Linux.
See the stats sidebar for the figures.
And it is all free, like open source software itself. In fact many Linux
distributions include a complete TLDP document set with the installation
to help the newcomer as well as the more experienced.
Also the organization has grown. TLDP is fully multi-lingual, people
work and help on tools, review and check, translate, publish and update.
All this requires work, and a core group of a few dozens aid the
authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition TLDP is pleased
to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including
Red Hat and IBM.
And TLDP continues to grow still, in numbers of documents, supported
languages and also new services to better help an ever increasing
audience. To achieve this TLDP is always looking for new volunteers
to join, ranging from authors to programmers and reviewers.
Some statistics
Authors: more than 450
Documents: more than 470
Languages: 14
Mailing lists: 11
Subscribers: more than 400
Web mirrors: 350
Why become an author?
One of the most common ways people come to join TLDP is that they have
already written up notes on a problem they solved, be it new hardware,
an installation, troubleshooting or something else. Frequently people
realize also others could benefit from these notes and submit them for
inclusion.
Also it is a simple way of joining the world of free software, one that
does not require a 24 hour connection to the net to stay current.
Documentation follows a calmer path, a necessity since correct documents
will always be more important than fast but inaccurate documents.
No matter the reason, documentation is important to help others in
using their system to the fullest.
When TLDP receives a new document it is first given an initial review to
see how well it fits in and weather it overlaps with existing documents
that the best solution is to amend the old document rather than make a
new one. Also TLDP helps with the documentation infrastructure that
makes it possible to produce the documents in a wide range of formats,
from the simplest plain text to typesetting for printing books. Next
comes publication whereby the document is included in the archive and
put on the web, not just on the main web pages but also on over 100
mirrors all over the world. From then on the author interacts with TLDP
in updating and maintaining the document.
Further information
For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org
and read the LDP FAQ http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/LDP-FAQ/index.html
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