Hello folks,
after much speculation, false alarms and rumors, I would like to officially
announce what we are planning to do with the new documentation.
The board has been at it for the past 2 month almost, since it became clear
that JBoss needs to grow even more that documentation is lacking and that
management of our growth requires some capital.
For example it becomes clear that while our growth is still pretty much
exponential, we need documentation, a good measure of QA, packaging and
release management. These are better done with a small full time group.
We want to achieve "professional" quality in all our aspects. That includes
things that normally open source groups don't do well, among others
"documentation" and it is a small company in the making.
One thing we would like to achieve very much is self sustainance, one where
the group of Open Source Programmers can generate enough of a revenue to
keep the various aspects of the project running at a "professional" quality
grade.
We (the board) have 2 requirement
1- Keep JBoss org "free". In fact JBoss is becoming an Open Source
Jaugernaut all by itself, the reason? the distribution! it is quality it is
free! We are totally dedicated to our Open Source roots.
2- Generate revenue from within the group for and by developers, the group
of Open Source Programmers that we have could be a self sustaining
structure. Structure the Open Source Programmers for profit.
2 is in constrast with RedHat that employs developers and Apache where most
jakarta guys are at SUN/IBM or do something else (brian behlendorf). Java
is a rich enough field that we can at least think about the possibility of
sustaining part of the developers through self generated revenues.
So THE GOAL OF ALL THIS is to generate enough money that all the developers
have an incentive to work and some of us can grow the free base.
How does it work while we keep it free?
here goes:
We are talking about the specific case of the documentation. Right now the
doco is really out of whack, there are parts that are out of date, plain
wrong and generally speaking they aren't maintained.
We are going to write the documentation in the famed user manual, pretty
much from scratch reusing what we can and when we have permission. The
result WILL BE FREE ONLINE. WILL BE FREE IN CVS.
So all the documentation we produce will be available in cvs and on the
website for you to use. What we will do is also offer "downloadable"
versions for a moderate fee (we are thinking $10-$30).
These version can be installed locally and even printed since one of the
downloadable versions will be PDF. You can get it from CVS if you are fancy
enough, but we offer the for pay download for everyones convenience. It is
targeted at the "casual user" that doesn't want to go to CVS.
The revenues go to the "GROUP OF OPEN SOURCE PROGRAMMERS" that wrote the
documentation in the first place. The "GROUP OF JBOSS PROGRAMMERS" shares
the revenues depending on their contributions.
This is "JBOSS GROUP" all of you that write doco are automatically part of
this "virtual company". There is a 30% cut that goes towards the maintaince
of JBoss org. The rest 70% is shared among authors.
Is this clear? This is for documentation only. Do NOT EXTRAPOLATE to
JBossServer itself. In fact the goal of all this is to keep JBoss.org
development and management absolutely FREE. THIS IS DOCO ONLY.
Write doco get paid.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
We are going to restart a professional grade documentation effort under the
"write doco get paid" program. It is co-written, available for free for
browsing and in cvs and available for download from JBoss for a fee. Profits
are shared among writers, a 30% goes to running JBoss.
Simple.
So I will try to spend a couple of days really going in details of the
status of the spec and getting you guys on board. Everything counts ,
writing, infrastructure, XML Docbook maintainance, review, patches etc.
FAQ:
Q: Does the same apply to JBossServer? Do we offer it for $$
A: No, in fact the goal is to keep JBossServer absolutely free while at the
same time achieving "professional quality" grade in our products.
Professional Grade LGPL by financing a professional core.
Q: What is JBoss Group?
A: JBoss Group is a virtual company representing the Open Source Programmers
of JBoss. As revenues are shared among developers and contributors, JBoss
Group distributes these. JBoss Group is also an umbrella for marketing more
traditional services such as Training. JBoss Group is a for profit company.
Q: Who takes care of billing?
A: We are investigating various venues, we will probably outsource the
credit card handling to a 3rd party shortly. JBoss Group is the virtual
company that aggregates the revenues and distributes to the members.
Q: I am a developer/writer, how does this move affect me?
A: If you are a developer you are free to not pay attention to this AT ALL.
It won't affect you in any way. You can however decide to write some
documentation and bring it under the "write doco, get paid" program. The
documentation you write, if integrated in the main manual, is then marketed
and distributed through JBoss' websites. It is also available for free
online for browsing and in CVS just like it is today. Finally you profit
share with us. In short, your life isn't changed at all, only now you might
get paid.
Q: I am a user of JBoss technology, how does this move affect me?
A: If you are a user, you will notice that this moves makes your life
better. First and foremost the documentation will be up-to-date since now
developers have a monetary incentive to produce quality uptodate
documentation, it is also edited and maintained in a professional grade
manual. Better yet, it is available for free online and in cvs. By popular
demand we offer a pre-packaged version for you to download. This will be
HTML and PDF.
Q: I am a writer how do I participate?
A: if you are a writer you have already been contacted for permission to
include the documentation in the new manual. If you are a new contributor
please refer to jboss-docs for submittal of documentation bits.
Q: How is the "profit sharing" decided?
A: It is proportional to your contribution. This is a bit "subjective" and
not linked to "words" or "pages", but takes into account things as disparate
as "pure contributions" to "XML Docbook maintainance". The board of JBoss
will approve the percentage distribution every other month.
Q: What is the price point you envision?
A: $10-$30 for the end user documentation, $20-$40 for the developer
documentation.
PLgC
Marc
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Marc Fleury, Ph.D
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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