There are a few FedoraNEWS.ORG contributors on this list, and I've been considering a few notions I'd like to discuss with this whole group of writers, to see what develops. I want to acknowledge that FedoraNEWS.ORG has been doing a great service to the Fedora community. The accuracy, timeliness, and usefulness of the articles is great. I've personally used several tutorials to accomplish new things with Fedora Core, such as setting up a yum repository. It seems that the niche FedoraNEWS.ORG documentation and the Fedora docs project (FDP) fill are not the same. I think the two groups (ideally) provide different and useful services to Fedora users. I see the FedoraNEWS.ORG articles as generally being timely, short, and focused on solving single problems. These articles are responsive and useful during test periods. Over the longterm, there may be less attraction in maintaining much of the docs because the problems they solve are no longer problems. I see the Fedora docs project as providing longer, broader documents that focus on multiple aspects of using Fedora Core or are more complex in their handling. There is room to grow into sizable books. Normally, the majority of the content in an FDP guide shouldn't change very much from Fedora Core release to release, typically just details of command usage and so forth. Even if you accept my definitions as entirely true, there is still plenty of room for crossover, and it was exactly that fact I have in mind. I'm wondering about the possibility of converting some of the longer FedoraNEWS.ORG articles/tutorials into formal FDP guides. I would envision something like this: 1. Identify FedoraNEWS.ORG tutorials which have momentum and scope to be maintainable for the long term. 2. The author(s) either convert the content to FDP standard DocBook, or enlist the help of other FDP contributors to convert. Once in DocBook, this is maintainable as the single source for all target systems, hopefully including FedoraNEWS.ORG. 3. Either the original author can continue maintaining, take on a joint maintainer from existing FDP writers, or hand over maintenance if there is someone interested in taking it on. It might be possible to stitch together several FedoraNEWS.ORG articles into one guide, for example a Fedora Yum Guide that includes how to configure and use yum, how to set up a repository, solutions for common problems, customizations, etc. These could easily be rendered for FDP as one guide, and for FedoraNEWS.ORG as a series of short articles. Single source, multiple audiences. One of my goals is clear - to increase the quantity and usefulness of the FDP guides. Hopefully there is something useful in here for the FedoraNEWS.ORG contributors. I'm usually hanging out at #fedora-docs on irc.freenode.net, or can come over to #fedoranews.org for discussion. I know licensing is one thing to cover; fortunately, a copyright holder can dual-license, so that is a solution. So far, FDP docs are under the GNU FDL 1.2+ (e.g. http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/documentation-guide/ln-legalnotice.html). Since the CC license used by FedoraNEWS.ORG allows it (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/), anyone could make a derivative work from FedoraNEWS.ORG articles, but it seems like a better idea to collaborate and single-source. Just out here doing too much thinking ... - Karsten -- Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer this .signature subject to random changes http://people.redhat.com/kwade/ gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41
