discuss: Staff Election was Re: LDP Committee?
Subject:
Re: Staff Election was Re: LDP Committee?
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
9 Mar 2005 07:20:37 -0000
Message-Id: <20050309071939.GA1788@lafn.org>
This thread was long and I've clipped some excerpts from it for comment.
On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 01:45:00PM +0100, Bas v.d. Wiel wrote:
> <rant>Is TLDP a legal entity? If not, this whole discussion about who
LDP is an informal legal entity. It has no by-laws but it exists and
could possibly even sue in court if necessary.
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, G Ferguson / LDP wrote:
>Are you not happy with certain individuals?
>
On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 04:38:10PM +0000, Martin Wheeler replied:
> Nope. (Though I have to admit that since this discussion started,
> I've been a little puzzled by Guylhem's absence from the table. He
> doesn't seem to be taking his role as Project Leader very seriously.
> But then I've learned that that's par for the course within this
> group; so no, I can't say I'm unhappy with anyone. I'm obviously
> deeply unhappy with the current organisation, though.)
It seems that we need a more active leader. But who? Just following
the discuss list alone is almost a full-time job. So we need someone that has
full time to devote to LDP. From past experience, we need someone that
is a known quantity (and quality) and not someone that might want to
take LDP commercial, etc.
> ####@####.#### (Mick) wrote:
> Therefore I propose the following for you all to
> criticize/amend/dismiss/ignore or do whatever you wish:
You've presented a fill-in-the-blanks solution below where filling in
the blanks and getting agreement on them is about a hundred times more
difficult than outlining the questions as you have done. The only
question you answered was 1b. where you thought that it "we" should be
an informal organization like we now have.
> 1. What is TLDP and where do we want to be in 2 years from now?
> 1b. Define "we", maybe? Although that's not really essential at this
> point.
>
> 2. What is the best way of getting where we want to be?
>
> 3. Which of the proposals received in reply to 2 is the most viable?
Or which combination of them.
>
> 4. Devise a structured method, a plan if you will, by which 2 should
3
[snip]
> be implemented. Define roles, and get things started. From there on
> the details will mostly work themselves out as long as there is a
> singular goal we're all aiming for.
You've got to be kidding. They say the devil is in the details.
For example, our vaporware lampadas/plone and what to substitute for it.
On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 09:37:30PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> Now, if said person could just persuade the entirety of LDP to abandon
> Linuxdoc and switch to canonical Docbook .... :)
I think people that say this haven't checked into the simplicity of
LinuxDoc and how it is more advanced than DocBook. It requires much
more sophisticated parsing by computer since it encourages omission of
end tags and sometimes omission of both start and end tags. Also, they
fail to understand that the semantic analysis benefits of DocBook vs
author-time-cost are usually below the prevailing benefit cost ratio.
Right now if an author spends say an hour writing on a needed subject,
she may be able to save say 20 hours of the readers time (in solving
problems, etc.): a 20:1 benefit cost ratio. But an hour spent messing
with DocBook tags (or learning it), etc., may only bring say 5 hours of
benefit to readers. Not worth it. Ask yourself, how much more benefit
is obtained from html derived from LinuxDoc as from html derived from
DocBook. I think not much.
David Lawyer
