On Wednesday 06 June 2007 16:27:28 Max Hetrick wrote:
> pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Unfortunately, I have had nothing, thus far, but bad experiences with
> > wikis. Especially when you begin letting others "mark up" something that
> > you've posted there. At that point, because your name is on it, you
> > "own" all of their mistakes. I'm not saying that the CentOS wiki is like
> > that, just wikis in general.
> >
> > WikiPedia is probably one of the most horrifically obvious examples of
> > what I am talking about. Not only do you have all of the blatant
> > inaccuracies, which tend to get attributed back to the original article
> > author, but you also have all of the drama that goes along with it.
> >
> > Things start to go sideways when you begin to let others exert their own
> > creative control over something with your name on it. I'm all for the
> > free exchange of ideas, information, and knowledge. I'm not all for
> > getting blamed for some crap someone added to something with my name on
> > it. Been there, done that, don't need that drama anymore.
> >
> > Some wikis, again I speak in general, not of the CentOS wiki, also demand
> > that you turn over any and all rights to whatever you post there. While
> > I enjoy sharing my knowledge with the world for free, I will be damned if
> > I will give up my rights to profit from it in the future. Even the BSD
> > license doesn't expect this.
> >
> > This document, the firewall one, is the first in a series of documents
> > that I plan on writing. I've worked very hard to get it to the state
> > that it is at right now. It's what I consider a "living document" and
> > will be changing as necessary. The second in the series is a document on
> > building a network monitor based on open source tools. I've just begun
> > writing it. I am hoping to have it completed in a couple of months, now
> > that I have a format I am happy with for my documents. The third of the
> > series will be on building a VPN concentrator based on open source tools.
> > Part of what takes me so long to write these documents is that I don't
> > actually enjoy writing. I enjoy doing. The firewall document started
> > out of necessity to build multiple Linux based firewalls consistently and
> > rapidly for myself and just morphed into something that I decided to
> > share with the community. I figured that since there wasn't much out
> > there that was useful others might like it.
> >
> > While it's, most definitely, not the be-all end-all of Linux based
> > firewall information, I think it's a pretty good document that I've
> > worked very hard to write in a presentable manner that most people could
> > understand and even expand upon for themselves. I am all for receiving
> > comments and suggestions for future revisions of the document, any
> > document that I write for that matter. I'm just not all for having my
> > documents hacked apart by every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the Internet and
> > then all of the misinformation getting lumped onto my shoulders because I
> > happen to be the person that wrote the original document. I've already
> > had enough drama from the CentOS forums where I got accused of being an
> > e-mail address harvester for a spammer. No thanks. I don't need that in
> > my life. I'm just a computer network engineer that THOUGHT he was doing
> > the right thing by giving back to the community.
>
> Understood, that's your right. It seems kind of silly, though, to go to
> the trouble of writing so much, then limit yourself with sharing to only
> a very small percentage of the CentOS community by broadcasting a
> message to e-mail you for documentation. Documentation is supposed to be
> readily available, that's the point of it, at least from my perspective,
> no matter what the license or stipulations of the content are.
>
> Although you can pick out a license for your material that would cover
> protecting the interests you have expressed, yet at the same time
> allowing others to share in your material. One of the Creative Commons
> license, or another, would do the trick.
>
> That said, do you not have a place to host the document then? It seems
> that if you've gone to that much trouble to write something, then
> perhaps you just need a spot somewhere to host the document?
>
> Regards,
> Max
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Just a thought how about releasing it as a "how to"?
--
Guy Fawkes, the only man to enter the house's of parliment
with honest intentions, (he was going to blow them up!)
Registered Linux user number 414240
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