Re: [native-lang] IRC Talk starts now!!

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.

> 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.

> 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 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? :-)

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.


> 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.

> 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.

> (I'm not inventing anything, it's in the IRC log).

Although you were not present at the conference :-)

> 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. 
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?


> 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.


> 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'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.

> 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).


> 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.


Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
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