Funding Linux TCP/IP Stack Documentation Project? 86
"Doing the update as a Second Edition (even if Coriolis was on board) means that useful information wouldn't be available until sometime in 2001 -- at which time the information will be obsolete again. Based on reader feedback, that simply isn't acceptable. The format of the First Edition is incredibly hostile to incremental publication. So Heather and I have decided to start over, completely re-designing and re-writing the book from scratch, incorporate additional information that was beyond the scope of the original book, and publish it incrementally on the Web. We have figured out the mechanics: we have a rough page design, we have a start on the publishing automation tools, and we have a Web server.
Based on some suggestions (one from a /. reader) here are the options as we see them for funding this project:
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Subscriptions: Our original idea (mentioned in our page) was to sell subscriptions to access most of the material; some material would be open to show what we do. Buyers of our book would get a discount on their first subscription, based on the fact they had bought our book. To keep overhead down, we were expecting to sell subscriptions on a quarterly and annual basis. We thought that $12/year or $4/quarter would strike a good balance. (We would also investigate how to accept subscriptions in currency other that U.S. dollars.)
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Advertising: The old standby, banner ads, is the most distasteful option, but one that we have to consider. I've noticed that a number of Linux sites use banner ads to help fund the effort. In our page design, we want to maximize the use of Web page real estate to show code and commentary, not ads. There are a couple of issues, such as where to place the ads, that would need to be addressed, but given the page design we would incorporate the ads in the commentary, and not the code or control panes.
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Contributions: Grants and subsidies from interested parties would help the project; if the contributions were large enough we could abandon both advertising and subscription completely and make the site open to all. We would use the Seti@Home treatment of contributions as a model, so that everyone who contributes can be recognized. Where would we put out our tin cup?
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The Eudora Model: One mixture that might work is to mimic the model used by Qualcomm's Eudora MUA for Windows and Macintosh: display ads to those who want to use the "free" service and suppress ads for those who subscribe. This adds a little complexity (and an annoyance to the free users) but it means the information would be available to all.
I'm sure these aren't the only way to do the trick that keeps us off the street. I welcome comments, suggestions, and brick-bats from Slashdotters.
Why not 'open source' the book as well? Part of the reason Heather and I didn't try to farm out the code analysis is that we wanted to have a consistent style. Frankly, it would be as much work to accept contributions and then edit them for style and structure as it would be to do the entire job ourselves. In one sense, the book will be open source in that readers will be able to post "yellow stickies" on our commentary...and readers can see the yellow-stickies (with attribution)."
Re:A.I. isn't that advanced yet :-\ (Score:1)
Honor system (Score:1)
Data on Paper = dead data (Score:1)
everyone should read, it states that printed
data is dead, i.e. you can't manipulate it
in anyway.
This still doesn't get around the problem of
funding the work you talk about, but please
if you do sort that out, just release an
online version.
This is becoming a fundamental issue (Score:3)
There is no shortage of content online. In fact there is rather too much of it. Some of it good, much bad, but it is out there. (From the point of view of the person who is trying to make money providing it that is. Clearly not from the point of the view who wants content that does not yet exist.)
However until content appears in a digestable form, it is not information. Which is why sites which provide some sort of searching and indexing of content (search engines,
Which sucks if you want to produce some content of your own.
Cheers,
Ben
dead trees (Score:1)
Another nice thing would be including coupons for newer books and books on related topic in the book. I mean REAL coupons, at least $10 off. nolo press does this for their legal books, and I like it.
You may want to issue addendum pages over the net.
Not too useful for the lamers who won't contribute, but convenient enough for us dead-tree-owners to update our books with.
Of course, contributors to the stack should get free copies for their efforts, and also so they can comment on their own code.
A barter system with other book publishers is probably also in order.
p.s. I really wished you had come out with a 2.2 book.
Re:Where is Steven's when we need him... (Score:2)
W. Richard Stevens wrote one of the definitive books on TCP/IP, and it was one of my primary reference materials when writing IP Stacks Commentary...it's one of the reasons that that Heather and I dedicated the book to his memory, and to the memory of Jon Postel, the first document guy. If I had the resources that Stevens had, I might try to aspire to write a book to that level of quality.
I won't apologize for the limits we worked under. They were the parameters, and we lived with them. That's one reason we are thinking about dumping paper completely--the format just doesn't work in the Open Source environment.
Can we do better? Yes. Will we do better? Only time will tell. You will be the judge, dear reader.
Re:So why is my shelve packed with O'Reilly books? (Score:3)
All good points, but when I'm doing something for which I need more than a glance at the documentation, there is nothing that beats having a good book on your desk. I can see how good a book of mine is by merely looking at it... The more it is thumbed through, the more post-it notes sticking out: all omens of its qualities...
The information in the book is not obsolote (2.4 TCP/IP Stack - not 2.0.34, that was the first edition!), and I can imagine that having a book on that topic would really be interesting.
Perhaps it's me, but for more than a couple of screenfuls, I prefer something on paper.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Re:dead trees (Score:1)
I much prefer paper documentation <turns round and looks at shelves> I must have more than £2,000 worth of books, some of which are second or third editions.
take DNS and bind
1st ed. 1992
2nd ed. 1997
2rd edition 1998
Total cost £65
or Sendmail
1st 1993
2nd 1997
total cost £55
So if you were to charge £10/year subscription and punted out a major revision every 2 or 3 years I'd be happy.
Whether you'd make profit on it or how you'd stop pirate copying I don't know.
Re:Who are these people?--professionals (Score:1)
Fine. Then do without the documentation and go thru ALL the trouble of figuring it all out for yourself.
No doubt you would be happy to make use of the information, once supplied, but you don't want to actually have to contribute ANYTHING to make it come about. The world is NOT free ($). EVERYTHING costs and EVERYONE should be paid for hard work that is valued. If you WANT to give your time and work away, knock yourself out. Tell your employer that you no longer need to be paid for your work. That is your decision. Live with it and be CONSISTENT.
Re:Indeed - you don't. (Score:2)
Puh-leeze don't whine that they don't give their work out for free: they are writers, they write for a living. If you have a problem with this: fine, go somewhere else. There are a number of people who are working on Free Software/Open Source while being paid for that, and someone writing documentation shouldn't be treated any different.
If they think they can sell a good-written book about Linux TCP/IP internals, it's their choice to try just that. And you and me and everybody else can choose if they would like to pay for that. Some of us will, others won't. But you should really cut the 'do it for the love of it'-crap.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
What Linux needs most... (Score:2)
I didn't say they "should give their work out for free". I'm saying that if they want to write something, I'm not obligated to pay for it. In other words, if they want to write a book, they can feel free to do so. If I want to give them money for it, I should feel free to do so. But having them come to Slashdot asking for money up front to fulfill a need that they see is not appropriate. Imagine if Linus had gone to some BBSs in 1990 asking for money to develop a replacement Unix kernel. Ridiculous. He just went ahead and did it, expecting no payment (indeed, expecting no fame or even assistance).
--
Bid on me! [ebay.com]
Live by the $, die by the $ (Score:1)
Don't get me wrong, I have a very strong, and very very commercial need for this information. I have had to hand reverse-engineer the Linux IPv4 stack to make some custom mods for work purposes. And, in fact, I almost bought the first edition of this book. The reasons I didn't were - 1. The book didn't go into _nearly_ enough detail for my needs - I felt that it gave overview information that was of academic interest to readers who didn't need to actually change the code but not enough meat for those who did - and 2. It was already out of date (a subject that the authors are trying to address here).
Unfortunately, when we are talking about a Free OS, and particularly about an area of documentation that is of interest to only a very specific subset of readers. It is a very difficult commercial proposition. The intersection of the set of people who are willing to spend the money on this information (generally business reasons) and the set of people for whom this level of detail is sufficient (probably more students and more casual readers) is rather small.
This is the classic area where the community has provided grass-roots documentation, (HOWTOs, FAQs etc.) rather than commercial interests getting involved.
Sorry to be harsh, but there's probably a good reason why Coriolis doesn't want to continue this publication. They're in it for the $$$.
Re:What Linux needs most... (Score:2)
They are not asking your money up front. They are asking your advice on how to fund a book they are writing on Linux TCP/IP internals. God forbid they earn something with it. You're indeed not obliged to pay for it, and nothing in the posting says you should.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Re:Ah, the old content funding problem (Score:1)
(Obviously, retailers like Amazon or eBay won't be affected... they do have revenue, even if it's not enough to make a profit.)
Little known fact: eBay has been profit-turning since its first month of operation. They're making about $60 million a year now...net profit.
Re:Shop it around to the big boys... (Score:1)
Try one of your creative solutions, sure. But the idea of getting a corporat angel may end up the winning one.
I applaud your goal of keeping creative control over the book in order to maintain quality. However you market it, think about the audience (sorry if this sounds like Tech Writing 101): is this to be a blow-by-blow description of the code, which may appeal to corporations trying to work with it? Or is it a textbook? Or a guide for programmers? Focus is critical to keeping up a document that helps somebody.
books24x7.com (Score:3)
--
What about Sponsors? (Score:1)
Speaking of patrons, remember there are a bunch of new penquin-millionaires. Don't be shy - hit up Larry and Bob. They can afford it, and they'll probably get even more back from your effort than they toss into the pot.
And don't forget the organizations like Collabra that are making it their business to put together sponsors with projects.
--
Who should read that? (Score:2)
You mention that one of the largest complaints about Linux is that there is a lack of high-profile documentation. Well, I think you have to differentiate here: He/she who is really after the innards of the revamped IP stack will devour anything that is close to a documentation such as source comments, HOWTOs, READMEs and so forth.
On the other side, the 'decision makers' (who not necessarily are identical to the most technically educated/interested people) might prefer an abstract such as 'how to leverage the success of your e-commerce using a new IP stack' or 'IP for decision makers' or 'Huh? they can do dat with l33nux?'.
I have an elderly version of 'Linux the complete reference' by LSL [lsl.com] which contains many (Mini-)HWOTOs and other stuff. Much of these documents deal with Linux 1.x versions and were refreshed with 2.x delta stuff. These readings still hold true for the 2.2.x kernels and probably will not be 'wrong' or 'untrue' for the 2.4 kernel.
My advice: Keep your book as it is and add the delta work as a smaller manual. That way the insider only needs to have the addendum with him/her and can leave the bulky Part I at home/office. Make these addendums subscribable, in both preprinted form as well as .PDF (no affiliation whatsoever) documents to download-after-pay. Or try to have one of the larger distros distribute your book. ('That manual deals with the TCP/IP kernel of Bonzo Linux in special but may also provide important informations for other distributions.', just like we see that in every second samba or firewalling book). You may even add a CD-ROM with a GPLed version of Dah One That Sponsored Thy Book.
Suck it up (Score:3)
How about we let people decide for themselves whether - or if - to "give to the community". Bitching about how someone "won't share" is a whiny, sanctimonious attitude more worthy of socialists. Waste your points and moderate this down all you want. My karma is descending toward the new limit of 50 anyway.
More people = Faster Production? (Score:2)
Re:Suck it up (Score:1)
nothing socialist about that. socialism (in a capitalist context) is about people who have a lot of money (because they got all the breaks in the world and in the process exploited other people) giving back to community that made them rich, not about making people work for free.
it's exactly this sort of whiners that make socialism hard to implement.
z.
OpenDocs Publishing (Score:1)
You find them at http://www.opendocspublishing.com
Re:More people = Faster Production? (Score:1)
University or Technical institution? (Score:2)
Apply for a teaching position at a university? Maybe they'll print your book... yes, they may charge in excess of $200 for it, but you'll be paid to teach the material you're writing about.
Personally I don't see the value of printing the book. I imagine O'Reilly isn't interested because it wasn't a good seller. This is no reflection on the quality of the book (I've skimmed it and put it back on the shelf), just a reflection on the size of the market.
(For those going to respond that Linux is huge, yadda yadda yadda, I mean a small market of Linux developers which work on TCP/IP programs, and have found the existing code, documentation and community support insufficient.)
The market of people willing to sign up for a detailed course on Network protocols, at which the core material is Linux's TCP/IP stack might be much more lucrative.
Re:This is becoming a fundamental issue (Score:1)
DB
Non-US$ payments (was:Fairest way?) (Score:2)
This turned out to be a fairly simple problem to solve -- indeed, I found several solutions.
For those people who send cash, all we would need to do is sort by currency and collect it until we have enough of a particular currency to go to the Reno currency exchange service. We discovered these people when I bought a book on eBay from a guy in the UK. (Then there are other uses: as my co-author suggests, a single subscription in small-denomination ruples might provide enough high-quality banknote paper to wallpaper the bathroom.) We would lose a little in the exchange, but that's a small price to pay to permit our content to be used world-wide.
For those people who send checks et al in non-US currency, our bank is willing to accept batches for a nominal fee.
In short, no problem!
Re:Accept Paypal.. 5$ ??? (Score:1)
Maybe what's what OSDN is for? hmm..
pan
Re:Data on Paper = dead data (Score:1)
Nonsense. Try this, READ A LONG NOVEL ONLY ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. Then continue reading proper novels the proper way, in a book form. Which way is easier on the eyes? Which one requires the least power? Which one is more transportable and usable with or without a net connection? With or without toxic batteries? Which one NEVER suffers a hardware problem or data corruption?
Fact: Reading all the time from ANY computer monitor is hard on the eyes and contributes to the development of astigmatism, near sightedness, headaches (and, of course, repetitive stress disorders).
I would agree that for SOME forms of information, the electronic form is best, but then, how many actually ONLY read that stuff off a nasty monitor rather than printing it out and reading it the easier way? The paperless office hasn't occurred and isn't even CLOSE to occurring for similar reasons. Paper use has INCREASED, not decreased. A monitor, of any kind, is fine for short spurts of reading but if you really want to read a long, involved manual or journal, particularly in a single sitting, paper is the best, most efficient way to go.
tax free, education foundation? (Score:1)
Any lawyers/accountants out there think this has any merit?
Re:I honestly don't understand the problem (Score:1)
I don't disagree, but volunteer effort isn't going to produce the polished professional documentation that the point & drool crowd needs. We who geek for the love of figuring this stuff out can use the LDP stuff, the source, etc; but we don't write what most would call serious docs. We write whatever docs we need, and pretty much stop there.
I know, I wrote some of the earliest usage documentation for the Linux 2.2 networking goodies. My stuff is mostly supplanted by HOWTOs now, and I haven't updated it in nearly a year. It fills my needs and apparently is still useful to others, it's had over 300k hits this year.
People still ask me fairly often about other sources of information, many of them seeking the comprehensive quality docs that these folks sound like they're aiming to write (I've never heard of the first book, sorry). None of them seem to be interested in doing something themselves to make better docs happen, either writing up notes on whatever they're doing so I could publish it for others to see, or sending money or hardware so that I could experiment further.
If I'd had hopes of making a living from documenting linux networking, they'd be crushed by now. What I did was for my own use and made public 'cuz it didn't cost me much to do it; there's been no material benefit from it.
So the point of the ramble, I guess, is that FascDot is right on the money; yer not gonna get rich selling your book.
Re:So why is my shelve packed with O'Reilly books? (Score:1)
what about the "Linux Fund" (Score:1)
Make older stuff available in 10-12 months? (Score:2)
Hmmm...in the book trade, that's called "remaindering." This process is the source of those books that appear on the sale table, the books that sell for $1, $3, $5, or for those really large coffee-table clay-coat books, the ubiquitious $9.98 price. :)
Perhaps an example closer to the mark is the one used in the stock business. You pay one hell of a large price for real-time stock-ticker feeds, but for those people who don't need up-to-the-second information the 20-minute-delayed feeds are considerably cheaper. Perhaps this is the model to keep in mind as we explore your question.
Part of the process of publishing the book on-line will be to go back to previously published information and release updates -- a living book in every sense of the word. Moving older, slightly outdated information to a publicly-accessible reading area would be a reasonable way to "recycle" those words that would help the cash-strapped student, while keeping the real value of up-to-date information for those readers with both money and interest.
I'm not ready at this time to commit to doing what you have asked, but I am bringing this up with my co-author and we'll make a decision. We will publish an answer to your question on the Web page.
Talk to O`Reilly & Carmack (Score:1)
Another person to talk to would be John Carmack, of Id Software. He seems to be very interested in the Linux & BSD TCP/IP stacks. He is a millionaire, who might see fit to give you a $100,000. Perhaps under the conditions that he is given a voice in the book, as he seems to like giving his opinion. Another condition may be that he recieve 10% royalties on the book. Sure, he wouldn't make any money, but a book that would seemingly be of interest to him would be published, and he wouldn't loose too much money.
on-demand publishing as one solution (Score:1)
using an on-demand publisher
such as upublish (http://www.
upublish.com) or the like.
As the name implies, they
print the book on demand, as
each order comes in. The
author gets a percentage of
each sale and retains the
copyright -- you can even
sell the rights to another
publisher if you so choose
The on-demand publisher
provides an ISBN number and
other handy items such as
handling ebook download.
You should check around on
google (http://www.google.com)
or your search engine of
choice.
I imagine you could use your
website to provide excerpts,
bulletin boards, commentary
and amplification. The bulk
of information would no doubt
be in the book, which you'd
offer purchasing information.
I'm mindful of the LaTeX sites
which offer useful information
but which all end up saying, "
Get The LaTeX Companion for more
detail."
Anyway, good luck!
Re:So why is my shelve packed with O'Reilly books? (Score:3)
I too have a shelf full of books I constantly reference, but my brother-in-law, who is both younger and a better programmer, gets by with almost no books --- but a lot of Altavista queries
I think you are missing the point. (Score:2)
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but they apply just as much to all the kernel hackers
Yup - but remember: there is a demend for the Linux kernel to be hacked -> Alan Cox hacks the Linux kernel [because he wants to] -> Red Hat pay him [so he can eat]. This book needs updating to 2.4 -> These guys want to do it -> who will pay them?There is nothing wrong with looking for a 'Red Hat' to fund your project.
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the issue isn't "how do we fund documentation writers" but "how do we find documentation writers who don't need/want to be funded"?
Is "how do we find kernel hackers that don't need to be funded?" an ideal goal, too?-
If you love to document the Linux TCP/IP stack then do it. Period.
If Red Hat hadn't hired Alan Cox, then there is a danger that Linux would have lost one of it's most valuable contributors. The man needs to eat.It is not inheirantly wrong to hope to be paid for hacking Linux.
Re:Street Performer Protocol (Score:1)
The band you mentioned sounds interesting... are they going to release the album in stores anyway (thus getting "unlimited" revenues) while giving advanced copies to their dontating fans? Sounds cool. However you have to have an existing reputation in order for that to work, new or "local" bands (even good ones) would find it difficult to get enough capital to cover making a fully professional recording.
So the SPP seems to fail for established artists by artificially capping their potential revenue, and seems to fail for new artists who are not well known enough to make the donation system work.
I'll check out the NPR piece as soon as I can get RA working on this linux box....
Stephen King model (Score:2)
other options? (Score:1)
--
Re:The Stephen King model (Score:1)
Ah, the old content funding problem (Score:5)
My advice to you, then, would be to adopt the business plan that we're going to see a lot more of in the future: Turn your content into a service. You could either charge a subscription (as you suggested), or use cookies to track how long a reader was on the site and bill them using a low hourly rate. Just like how open source software works, this guarantees you an income even when other people reproduce your works (which isn't necessarily bad, of course!). If you're selling downloads, people can easily mirror the pages elsewhere, and you lose your money. But mirroring the server power that keeps a service running isn't easy -- they'd need to charge, too, which means that they're not really competing with you.
A Eudora-type model probably isn't a good idea -- few people are going to go out of their way to pay to eliminate the ads, and the choice between "free, but ads" and "pay for no ads" could be difficult to pitch to both consumers and investors.
Best of luck to you regardless of which method you choose -- I've consulted Linux IP Stacks Commentary quite a number of times, and I'd love to see an updated version of the "book"!
No to Stephen King-like one-man shows (Score:1)
What you are asking, however, is the open-source community to fund one-man shows.
It will not happen.
Fairest way? (Score:1)
How about making all material freely available to non-subscribers 10 or 12 months later, so that this useful resource can be accessed by those who are interested, but are never going to subscribe to everything.
A large number of paying subscribers will also give your current publisher pause for thought.
- Derwen
Accept Paypal (Score:3)
Lobby for someone to help foot the initial bill. (IBM is betting the house on Linux...I bet they'd do it.)
Accept PayPal donations from individuals/small business.
And, have a low ($5/month absolute tops) subscription rate and to keep the site updated regularly. (billable through PayPal!)
Josh
Re:other publishers? (Score:1)
[for the humour impaired, think very carefully a minute]
Possible Solutions (Score:5)
Certainly, give free access to part of the material to help the community. No one will begrudge you banner ads on that portion; the community has become used to overlooking them, for the most part, as long as no extraneous JavaScript windows go popping up.
Certainly, sell subscriptions. Real Programmers(tm) are used to subscribing to various publications which track fast-moving standards. At $12/yr, this is cheaper by an order of magnitude than most.
Have each section attached to some means of readers (perhaps only registered readers) leaving marginalia. During the update sweeps, some of this marginalia might be folded into the main text. This gives you Open Source/peer review flexibility without having to embed it right on the page immediately, Wiki-like.
Overall, I think you're in a good position, as long as the interface is clean, consistant, and direct.
Q:Time to market? A:Concurrent Engineering. (Score:2)
I'm sure there is no lack of people in the Linux comunity willing to donate some docs they've put together themselves in exchange for credit in the book. You're trying to solve a "time to market problem" and the only way to solve that is working in parelell with other linux power users.
Re:Accept Paypal (Score:1)
You did know that there are countries outside the US?
Like, Finland!
I honestly don't understand the problem (Score:3)
My advice is: If you love to document the Linux TCP/IP stack then do it. Period. You can put kibbies in the cat dish via other paid work. Conceivably someone might later want to give you money/stocks for the effort you put in, but that's not the reason you should be doing it.
There's no point in objecting to my advice by saying "but how'm I gonna eat?". Either you want to do this badly enough that you'll do it no matter what--or you won't. That's all there is.
--
Bid on me! [ebay.com]
Re:Street Performer Protocol (Score:1)
If you stick to a more traditional method (i.e. any other method that pays based on popularity, such as subscriptions, banner ads, etc) then the author doesn't have to set a profitability limit. Thus, there isn't a good business reason to try the SPP if you are interested in "keeping kibble in the cat bowl" for as long as possible.
Additionally, the problem of even specifying your "max profit" under the SPP is hard to overcome. How many donors is your book likely to attract? How long will it take you to put it together (thus keeping you from other kibble-producing work)? If you undershoot, you end up wasting time/effort as your book goes "overbudget." If you overshoot, your contribution cap isn't met and has to be refunded. What if you have no reputation to justify ANY contribution cap?
I read the SPP pdf and I think it's an interesting idea, but the "max profit" model probably won't seem like good business sense to most performers.
Well... (Score:1)
As other slashdot poster said, forget the paper format. I would suggest DocBook, as it can be transformed into a lot of outputs, or maybe even LATeX (even though I prefer DocBook). Then you can put pdfs, postscripts, etc, available for some amount, and let people print them for their own use if they wanted to.
David
Re:Honor system (Score:1)
Once again, let the market decide (Score:2)
Sorry, but my money means as much to me as your does to you - I'm not interested in creating a charitable fund to subsidize the production of a half-decent book. I've read parts of this book and its not one I would recommend or buy again.
I think the market has already passed judgement on this publication.
...or perhaps the vendors, then us (Score:1)
"Unix Philosophy" a great underrated book (Score:2)
Re:Q:Time to market? A:Concurrent Engineering. (Score:3)
Perhaps you haven't seen any of the CoriolisOpen Commentary series? The structure of the book is that the source code for the subsystem being described is published, with line numbers. Within the meat of the book, there are constant references to those line numbers. Furthermore, in the source code there are little markers showing where in the commentary the function or segment is discussed.
These design elements are unique to the series.
What Heather and I are considering is a completely different method of tying text to source lines, and using on-line presentation instead of using dead trees -- at least in the begining. The development process requires that text be coded in a certain way so that software can handle code and text separately.
Could volunteers work within the framework that we are creating? Of course. Indeed, Heather and I see some possibilities that we don't dare dream about until we see how this project works out -- if it does, we may well be paying authors to generate content for us in areas outside of the TCP/IP environment.
Crediting authors is not a problem. The way we plan to organize the book, having an author credit for each piece is simple, easy, and elegant. The credit would be there, with a link to a bio.
For the moment, we would need to do the first few contributions, to work out the bugs and to react quickly to feedback from the readers. There may be flaws in our basic design that may require time back on the drawing board to fix. When we get a presentation style that readers approve, then we can look at farming out some of the stuff.
Indeed, I'll say this right now, and loudly: I'll accept any offer from any victim, er, volunteer to write the sections on Routing. I'm not happy with my attempt at it.
Why bother? (Score:1)
Re:Talk to the FSF about funding Free Documentatio (Score:1)
Funding Free Software/Documentation (Score:1)
I really dislike any of the proposed solutions, except possibly the tin cup for donations. I think it will be essential that software and documentation be completely Free, even more so in the future than now. The diverse types of distribution models, the advantages of truely free software/documentation, and the attitude of the community require completely Free products more and more all the time. These other proposals just aren't suitable.
Several existing solutions come to mind:
1) Sell printed books. Many publishers will publish Free documentation (eg. GFDL) if they believe enough copies will be purchased.
2) Tin can for donations. I doubt this will go far without some creativity, but it could help.
3) SourceXchange - this is partly what SourceXchange was invented to address. It is supposed to take care of the 3rd party/escrow issues, so companies and individuals can "pledge" money which is paid when milestones are met. It is an excellent idea, although I don't know how well it is working.
4) The Linux Fund - They give money to developers working on important/interesting projects. Right now it is capped at $1k per project, so this may not be enough for you, but it will help. I think they will be giving out more money in the future. *** Everybody go get your Linux Fund credit cards now so your credit card company can help pay for free software!!! *** (http://www.linuxfund.org/)
5) Direct corporate sponsorship. There are many companies who will gladly part with what is for them a small amount of money if you can provide something which is of value to them and they don't have to worry about all the details. Going through something like SourceXchange may make it easier for them to get involved.
For many books, going to a publisher is a good way to go. You can make a fair chunk of money and your document gets all the benefits of professional editors, indexers, etc. If this is a feasible option, do this. Make sure you tell them you'll only use a Free license, like the FDL. Also make sure you get a good contract. They usually slip in some nasty bits on the first draft of the contract hoping you'll miss them.
For most documents (and all software), we need another solution. I think we typically should do 2-5 all combined. ie. Get the Linux Fund to put up some money, ask individuals to send in some money, and try to get corporations to help too. Ideally SourceXchange would manage the whole process and help things go smoothly. The fact that nobody else has suggested them as a solution worries me a lot. I suspect it is because their web pages are not too friendly and Collab.Net doesn't advertise/emphasize this use for SourceXchange.
It also isn't clear if they've set things up right for this. Perhaps they should have a "subscription" where people "join" at one of various annual contribution levels (as with the PBS or NPR) and then the individual has the option of selecting which projects or project categories their $'s go to support. They could also implement matching funds from the Linux Fund or corporations. These methods work well for NPR and PBS(ie. radio and tv), so I don't see why it wouldn't work for software too. This also solves the payment problem. I'd rather write one $50 check a year than four $5 checks. It is just too much of a hassle. Then I could go to their web page every few months and click on a few projects I want my money to go to. (It could all be pro-rated by day, and divided into the projects I select...) SourceXchange would make sure they milstones are met and deliver the $ if they are met.
Dan
Re:Who are these people? (Score:2)
I believe this to be a fair question, and one deserving of an answer.
Stephen Satchell (that's me) started with ARPAnet back in 1972 at UIUC, did embedded programming for products in the banking and publishing field up until 1987, a part-time product reviewer starting in 1984 and thrust into full-time professional writing in 1988, first as a freelancer and then as staff at InfoWorld magazine. Even as magazine staff I wrote programs, including benchmarks. I've worked with the SPEC series, porting it to a couple of environments. Since that time I've moved between industry and journalism, writing in both places. Today, I'm working with a number of magazines to illustrate the Carnivore problem, network security issues, and (today) got a letter inviting back onto a product review board. What goes around...
Oh, yes, you will find me contributing to a number of the Linux mailing lists from time to time. I sell Linux-hosted products. I use Linux extensively in my test consulting practice.
Ms. Clifford's writing background includes a number of books, both non-fiction and fiction, editorships at magazines such as VLSI Design and InfoWorld, regularly wrote features on science, computers, technology, and medicine, and even ran a science fiction fan magazine with her ex-husband...complete with Varityper CompSet typesetter and film developer in their Santa Clara living room. I met Ms. Clifford at InfoWorld, and from that initial meeting (and that tape-drive product comparison) began a working relationship that continues to this day. About 1.2 million words has come out of the collaboration.
Today, the two of us live in a duplex building, her on one side of the firewall and I on the other side. Fiber optics isolate our two networks. A love for writing binds the two sides of the house together. The cats (on both sides) and the aforementioned firewall keep us sane.
Re:I honestly don't understand the problem (Score:1)
"Kibbies" are Middle Eastern lamb meatloaf sandwiches. "Kibbles" are pet food.
but I do agree with the thrust of what you said. I'll just add on some economic justification. Part of what makes open source work is that it is, in a capitalist sense, ultimately competitive. If you do something for free, you have undercut the competition. If you you do something high quality and free, you've undercut all of the competition. If you write the best TCP/IP doc there is, and you give it away, the world will beat a path to your door. You win, and nobody else will ever write doc again. If there's any paid work to do, you'll be asked. If you do it because you love it, all the better.
Re:Make older stuff available in 10-12 months? (Score:1)
You could do this by keeping each revision of each page (or page set) in something like cvs, and the viewer's subscriber level controls whether or not they get the latest revision or not.
How much do they need? ...and penguins... (Score:1)
You left them alone in the room with a penguin!? Mr Gates, your men are already dead.
Well, it happened to Vinod Valloppillil [vinod.com]... (-: Remember Nat Brown's "No 2-day NT drivers [opensource.org]" statement?
Free Online Documentation Infrastructure (Score:3)
Why not such a system for documenting code? I know that systems for publishing and linking code to itself exists (like LXR [linux.no]). How about such a system that would allow links to be placed in the text to user-contributed documentation? Said documentation could be anything from "this statement is doing such-and-such" to an overview of an entire module.
This documentation would be user-contributed and, of course, user edited. Editing would need to be done based on a voting system... just saying whether a given bit of doc is useful ought to be enough. Attribution is easily done, as well.
The hardest bit would probably be telling the system where you want to place a link. Do you want to doc the line? The function definition? That word? These 3 functions? That bit of code and that one over there in a different file that happen to work together? Where does the link go?
Anyone have an idea on how to do that? I know I'm up for contributing to the development of such a system (playing with Zope [zope.org] has gotten me interested in dynamic web stuff).
---
Re:So why is my shelve packed with O'Reilly books? (Score:1)
Re:So why is my shelve packed with O'Reilly books? (Score:1)
:)
Re:Accept Paypal (Score:1)
Who are these people? (Score:1)
Shop it around to the big boys... (Score:2)
Re:Cunts (Score:1)
professional writers means that they make living of it, so of course they can't afford to do it for free. and unlike a program, which can be modular and written by many people who are willing to chip in, a book has to have consistent style and logic, so it must be written by few people and generally edited by one person.
z.
books are useless for shortlived information (Score:3)
- I would probably never read 95% of it
- It would be a huge pile of paper
- It would be difficult to update
- It would be expensive.
Now linuxdoc is not perfect, it is often difficult to find the right document for instance. But once youhave it, it is easy to find out whether you have the latest version, to find relevant related material, cut paste pieces of code/shell script, etc.
Now, I can't imagine that there's a lot of people in paper documentation of an obsolete TCP stack. An online version of this documentation could have been put on the web before it was completely finished, allowing people to comment on it and maybe even contribute to it. That also would have meant that there was at least some documentation while the stack was not yet obsolete.
So for the next version of the book, I strongly recommend not to bother with a paper version. You'll do your readers a favor and make the documentation more usefull. Of course you won't get royalties, but I can't imagine that your current TCP stack book is a bestseller either.
Street Performer Protocol (Score:5)
This is no pipe dream, IIRC this has been discussed on
Re:Street Performer Protocol (Score:1)
which some people would see as a lack of interest (Score:2)
If there was enough interest in the book, people would have bought it and Coriolis wouldn't have said no to paying for a second one. If there was enough interest in writing one for free, it would have been done. Free speech works best when it's combined with free beer. Most open source programmers don't seem hugely interested in (or capable of, honestly) writing good documentation and most writers don't seem willing to donate the massive amount of effort required to write a book and then give it away for free. After all, not a lot of writers can sell support contracts for their books and Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, et al seem more interested in creating yet another graphical install tool rather than creating good documentation.
Where is Steven's when we need him... (Score:2)
How interesting that yesterday's /. carried the wonderful article on Richard Stevens and today the writers of a work bearing a striking similarity, at least in subject matter, is described. I have two comments. First, I have looked at the Coriolis book and it is no where near the quality of the Steven's books. Now I don't mean this as a criticism, except in the constructive sense. The authors of the Linux stack book should realize that most people are going to exepect at least the quality that Stevens put forth for BSD or the book wont be very interesting. Second, were the authors to aspire to that level, it seems reasonable that Addison Weseley might be interested in taking over the project.
My opinion is that the 2.4 TCP/IP stack will be around for a long time, and with the improvements over 2.2, deserves a treatment in book form similar to the Stevens efforts. I would applaud the authors if they feel this way too.
uhhh... SourceForge? (Score:2)
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
A.I. isn't that advanced yet :-\ (Score:2)
while the collaboration software enforces the rules to keep the whole thing consistent.
What is required to be consistent, in this case, is the writing style. Collaboration software makes no pretense of being able to fix writing style.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
Don't be surprised (Score:2)
I'm suprised no-one else mentioned this
You mean like #10 [slashdot.org]?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
Talk to the FSF about funding Free Documentation (Score:4)
1) deeply technical and narrowly focused. There will not be a mass market for this book, even within the technical community. Therefore, a print publication is probably out of the question at least initially.
2) always changing. This means that for the book to remain useful to anyone, it will need constant updating as the software it documents is changed. Therefore, I agree with the other posters who have said that you should probably publish this in electronic format (SGML-based, like DocBook), using a license that allows others to maintain it. I recommend that you take a look at the GNU Free Documentation License [gnu.org].
The FSF doesn't have a lot of money to pay developers for software or documentation, but they do have some resources. Also, they have contacts with many other groups in the Free Software/Open Source movement, and might be able to solicit funds from Red Hat, SuSE, O'Reilly, VA Linux, etc. if they couldn't cover the costs themselves. Finally, the hackers who would be most interested in buying your book will be much more likely to make donations to finance the effort if they know that it will remain Free Documentation [gnu.org] (ie: FDL'ed).
With this model, you probably will not get royalties, but would instead be paid a lump sum for the work, and then paid additional amounts for revisions over time. However, due to the very narrow appeal of a book like this, it would probably be more profitable for you than hoping for a conventional print publishing contract. You will probably never get one, and even if you do, the circulation of the book would be so small that the royalties would be negligible.
Please consider contacting the FSF about this possibility -- it's worth a shot.
Alex Berkman
But with a lot of signatures on such a petition... (Score:2)
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
Re:Street Performer Protocol (Score:1)
Re:A.I. isn't that advanced yet :-\ (Score:2)
You would complain if every app had different iconsets, styles, shortcuts... why should books be any different... (short answer? they shouldn't).
Re:Don't be surprised (Score:1)
Prince style (Score:1)
Micro payments (Score:1)
Volentary micropayments systems would be the real kicker for many free online services and software projects.
<Paranoid>
Makes you wonder what the real reasons are there's no real workable systems around... Maybe the Banks with their CC intrests, major software houses and major content providers have made a deal not to allow this tech to happen.
</Paranoid>