Hi,
I see that this IRC conference has generated much more buzz than Daniel
would have expected.
I'd like to reassure Andre as well as the other readers than I'm calm.
I'd like to precise some things about my position.
Why do OOoAuthors stirr so much discussion, from my side and others?
First I'd like to point out that the basic concept of OOoAuthors is
perfectly acceptable itself. An external site providing documentation
on OOo. That sounds good to me, and I guess to everybody here.
In every FOSS project history has its importance. As a matter of fact,
did you know that Daniel was willing to become the documentation project
lead? He wasn't elected. Then he created OOoAuthors. And then he changed
the licence, while not explaining to the OOoAuthors members the
consequence for this.
What you may not know (and some here can confirm my point) is that
Daniel loves to send off-list email telling people about how bad using
OOo is, and how the "establishment of OOo" (understand some project
leads) is screwing up its job. I cannot of course read Daniel's mind.
But I can watch his moves. And you know what? He's everything but
somebody who needs "management", as Ian keeps telling me. Daniel has an
agenda. Now, as I keep saying myself, I have no problem with OOoAuthors.
It's an external site, outside OOo. But I do have a problem with its
intent. The intent of OOoAuthors is to attract as much people as
possible by trying to be appealing to advanced users as well as
newcomers. (I'm not inventing anything, it's in the IRC log). What this
means is that the intent of OOoAuthors is not just to help some
documentation writers contribute, it is purely and simply to lure away
users, contributors newcomers from OOo. Is that what you call a
community? I don't, personally.
Look for instance at how Daniel is spreading his propaganda on the
discuss list. Almost every day, you'll have a post whose content and
logic will tell you to go contribute to OOoAuthors. But why should
OOoAuthors chase on the lists of OOo?
Wouldn't it be the same if I opened a site called, say
"CharlesownOOocommunity.com" and everyday I would go around the lists of
OOo and tell everybody to move to my site because, among other reasons,
there are problems with the OOo site? How would that feel? That would be
at least intellectually unhonest, for a very simple reason: if you are
part of a community that has problems (and frankly, do you know one that
hasn't ?) then you should try to fix them, not go away founding your
own little thing. I'm valuing this behaviour because I think that we're
one community. If we weren't, I would find all this a normal behaviour.
Now, I've heard many here complaining about the Documentation project.
First, I'm not the documentation lead. Second, if you have problems, try
to fix the documentation project, and if you can't, then go complain to
the Community Council.
I don't think that our discussion will lead somewhere, but I may be
wrong. I too would like to go work at things that are more useful for
OOo. However, I'd like to know why Jonathon thinks OOo is not a good
place to contribute. I think it's important to understand his reasons.
Best,
Charles.
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