jBoss is not the first organization to look at selling docs in some way.
Has anyone looked at the "open content license?" This license is wildely
used for docs distributed online. In a nutshell, anyone can distribute the
docs electronically in any form, but they are restricted from selling
printed copies.
If jBoss did this, they could distribute the docs and farm out the selling
of bound manuals. I like to have a bound manual and I often send the PDF
files off to Kinko's to be printed double sided on 3 hole punch. However, I
only do this if I can't buy a book already. If I can buy a book, I do.
Anyhow, I have a few questions.
1 - Under what license will the "free" docs be distributed? What stops
someone from simply extracting all the posted docs (or docs in CVS) into a
zip file and posting it for download somewhere?
2 - Marc wrote:
> Q: What is the price point you envision?
> A: $10-$30 for the end user documentation, $20-$40 for the developer
> documentation.
What is developer documentation? Is this for developers of jBoss or
developers writing apps that run in jBoss?
If the former, does anyone really want to charge jBoss developers for docs?
If the later, how does "user documentation" differ from "developer
documentation?" As an author of a jBoss app, will I need both sets of docs,
for as much as $70?
3 - Will I need to pay for the docs again every time they have a
substantial change? Or am I buying docs including "upgrades?" If the later,
not so bad for me, but there will be a big administration burden placed on
someone at jBoss to track this. If the former, the docs won't be usefull
but they will be expensive if I have to shell out $70 every three months.
Thats a big incentive for me to just get the free docs from CVS.
4 - How will developers feel about not getting paid to write code while
others are paid to document their code? Does this provide an incentive for
developers to stop developing jBoss and start writing docs for jBoss? Is
there really enough money involved to actually provide any incentive to doc
writers? It dossen't seem like there is that much potential here that the
level of effort required to administer this program or participate in it
will be worth it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm very much in favor of the jBoss group generating
revenue. I just don't think this is a particulary efficient way to do it.
Some things I would pay money for include:
1 - A subscription CD service. Each quarter, I would like to receive a CD
with all the released versions of jBoss, the current beta, the mail
archives and the docs. Maybe the source as well. It should all fit. A CD
making company can produce these for about $1.00 a piece, including some
nice artwork screnned onto the CD and a cardboard sleeve. PostgreSQL does
this. I have no idea how well it works, but maybe they would be willing to
tell us.
2 - Per incident tech support. Very often, I get so frustrated or am in
such a hurry that I am willing to call a 900 number of give my credit card
number to someone who can save me hours or even days getting something to
work. As long as the support is quality, I would be happy with this. Of
course, people would resent this is good docs are not available.
3 - Training, like that that Marc is conducting in Atlanta.
Of course, all this becomes much more feasible as the jBoss user base
grows. Having quality docs freely available and easily available will help
grow the user base.
Just my unsolicited $0.02. I think I represent a typical user, who is
trying to actually write and deploy a serious app under jBoss.
If you guys proceed, I wish you the best success with this plan. Really!
Jim
--On Friday, March 16, 2001 4:30 PM +0100 Ole Husgaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Lets do a calculation:
> Say, you have 20 people that you would like
> go each have a $250 share of documentation
> sales per year. For this you need $5000 to
> share each year. Now let us assume that
> half of the income from docs sales goes to
> costs driving the business. That means you
> will have to sell docs for $10,000 each
> year.
>
> Is this possible? Let us assume it is, and
> see what could happen:
>
> If you can sell documentation for $10,000
> each year, someone else will start selling
> docs too, probably at a lower price to gain
> market share. Since the docs in the CVS
> version are still free (as in freedom), you
> have ABSOLUTELY NO PROTECTION against this.
> Given that the production price of a file
> copy is near zero, you will end up having a
> sales price near zero in a competitive market.
>
>> From core JBoss developers, you may not see
> this threat, as most would like you and
> others to make some $$ off this. But it takes
> only a single independently generated copy of
> a docs PDF being freely and publicly
> available on a web server somewhere to end
> your docs sales. And there is NOTHING you can
> do about it, unless the docs source becomes
> non-free.
>
> I guess that you have already considered this,
> but maybe I am missing one of your points.
>
> Please explain.
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Ole Husgaard.
>
>
>
> marc fleury wrote:
>>
>> 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
>> _________________
>> Marc Fleury, Ph.D
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> _________________
