Hi, On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 20:55 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote: > Charles-H. Schulz wrote: > > > 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. > > This is not true. I was willing to be a CO-lead along with Scott. Scott > is the documentation project lead and I had no intention of changing that. Strange I was told a totally different story... > > > Then he created OOoAuthors. > > No, OOoAuthors was there before. You are making it sound like I made > OOoAuthors *because* I wasn't elected and that is a flat out lie. Of > course, you can't read minds. You just make a guess that is convenient > to you and state is as fact. OOoAuthors existed before this. Scott > *offered* me the position of candidate as co-lead because he felt that I > was doing something valuable so I'd be a good option. I accepted.
But you were not nominated. I don't understand then... > > > And then he changed > > the licence, while not explaining to the OOoAuthors members the > > consequence for this. > > We discussed the license to a great extent. We spent weeks going over > all the details, and every consequence. What I didn't anticipate was > that *after* weeks of public discussion, and then subsequent weeks of > license change, a small group of people inside OOo would use it as > excuse to paint me as if I was doing something bad. Our work *can* and > *is* posted on the documentation project site. Both the PDL work we have > as well as the CC work we have. We had very good reasons for the license > change, which I invite you to read here: > > http://oooauthors.org/authors-license.odt/file_view What you don't seem to realize or understand is that "this small group of people" is a little bit bigger than what you paint. The PDL, despite what you have claimed in other mails, is a licence drafted and used by and for the community, not by Sun. > > > > 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" > > If they are off-list emails how would you know about them? :-) > Or how would you know that I love them? :-) Maybe because you sent me such mails and that many other people reported similar behaviour off list? :-) > > Actually I think I am fairly reserved in making negative comments about > specific people because this is rarely productive. When I think it might > be productive, I generally do it publically. For example, I think you > are being incredibly paranoid, childish, and you seem to live in a > separate reality that exists only in your head. Let's just assume you never wrote the sentence above and move on. > > > > Daniel has an agenda. > > I think you are jealous because I have done something good and you have > an agenda to make up stuff to make me look bad. I'd rather let my work > speak for itself. I would have thought that it's the contrary. But as I said, let's move on. > > > The intent of OOoAuthors is to attract as much people as > > possible by trying to be appealing to advanced users as well as > > newcomers. > > Uhmm... is that a bad thing? I'd think it'd be good. Well, it is a bad thing in the sense that you are trying to take people away from OOo, the ".org", the community if which you're supposed to be a representative. It's good to do this in a business context for instance, but not in a community context where we (altogether) are supposed to build a community, not fragment it. > > > (I'm not inventing anything, it's in the IRC log). > > Although you were not present at the conference :-) Maybe somebody was nice and gentle enough to provide me the logs afterwards :-) > > > 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. > > And this is where you get paranoid. How are we going to write anything > if we don't get any writers and reviewers? The more advanced users and > the more newcommers we have the better our documentation will be. > Advanced users can explain advanced features. New users make excellent > reviewers, and they are a major reason why the result of our work is > very readable documentation. > > I wish everyone was doing this. When someone comes in and says "I want > tohelp with OOo" don't just ignore him. Give him some ideas. Ask what > he's interested in. Suggest your favourite project as a place to work. But OOoAuthors is not a project among others. Suggest first the documentation project. Is this so difficult to do? > > Try to make your project a fun and welcomming place for this person. > Make the newcommer feel appreciated and make it as easy as possible for > him to contribute. For example, at OOoAuthors we try to make the website > easy to use. We also have a supportive membership who will help a new > member join in and get started. Don't act like this is wrong. This is > exactly what everyone should be doing. How else do you expect to get > more volunteers so they can help with al the things that need doing? Isn't it exactly like this goes inside OOo? > > > > But why should OOoAuthors chase on the lists of OOo? > > See above. > > If you think it's wrong to talk to people and encourage them to work on > a project then no wonder we don't have enough volunteers. I think it's wrong to take people away from our community just because you assume that we're doing things in the wrong way. > > > > 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, > > But I /am/ trying to fix them. I made the contribution page which you > can see right now, as an effort to attract contributors to OOo. I know and it's a good thing. > I've > made many proposals on the website list, about simplifying the way > people find a mirror, about making it easier for developers to > understand the developers page (I provided sample Javascript code for > this - and Alex Fisher used it to make the CDROM page friendlier), I've > asked about adding PHP to the site, or Wikis or some form of content > management, and the site managers have made it clear that for > infrastructural and other reasons this is just not going to happen, so I > also made a site on a different server, with you and everyone is welcome > to use any way you like, and which does have Wikis and content > management, and it's freely available for you to use. But if this is all well and nice, how come some people (and not just me, really) see this as a community fork. If things were so clear and pure, how come such problems would arise every now and then? > > > 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. > > What could the community council do about the fact that CVS and SSH > tunnels are a difficult barrier to cross? (for example). You know what? OOo is 10 million lines of C++ code. We're not going to change them to visual basic and ten lines of code in the 3.0 just because this is a barrier, although we can try to make things easier (and they've become easier with the time) for more people to contribute. But we didn't get away from the community, the CVS and the SSH tools because of that. > > > > 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. > > I think that there reasons can be divided into two groups: > > 1) technical. > 2) cultural. > > The technical reasons really come down to CVS, SSH and IZ being > difficult tools to use for writing documentation. > > The cultural reason comes down to the fact that when someone tries to do > something new, and tries to find a potentially better way to do things > they get attacked and are accused of all sorts of nasty things. Instead > of welcomming the existence of a new tool which you are free to use or > not use as you please, you fabricate artificial problems and attack the > person who did all the work. And you never went as far as thinking that, besides picturing a gross caricature of how some initiatives that were controversial were blocked, some people who had done a lot of work too knew the topic even better than you and could have a point against your initiative? Charles. > > > Cheers, > Daniel. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
