[FM Discuss] back from wikimania

[adam hyde]

hey

> i might be able to act as a driver for Spanish localisation to some extent. 
> i notice that the Blender Foundation documentation committee (i'm on the 
> mailing list) has had no problem finding people to translate their wiki 
> manuals into Spanish and Portugese. 

nice...a spanish verson would be very very cool! i have made a few
points about this below

> 
> to a large degree the popularity of the tool itself will determine the
> likelihood of finding volunteers; it's generally the case that volunteer
> translators are also users. would it be necessary to translate all 
> manuals into a given language at once or do we encourage translation on a 
> tool-by-tool basis? the latter would be much easier i think.
> 

 i think this is the right moment to bring up questions about
localisation/translation...so, what i had been considering until now is
to actually manage the languages as a 'localisation' of fm more than a
translation. a translation of the current material might help be
interesting to get some docs into another language, which will be useful
in itself. however i have tried this with the dutch version of the
manuals and i have found that unless there is someone driving the
language, then the docs just stay there and are more of an archive than
a living entity

for the dutch version I am going to go to a conf in sept in Amsterdam
about dutch wikis and propose someone take over the management of the
dutch language fm because of this issue

this prompted me to think more about languages. Some issues I have
thought about include:

1. I think a language should have its own floss manuals site with the
interface translated
2. someone needs to choose the right softwares to include for any given
language - not all softwares are available in all languages
3. how to we ensure the quality of a given langauge site is what floss
manuals is trying to achieve?
5. who pays for it? (server hosting etc - this is a big issue for
wikipedia as their single biggest overhead is running their 350 servers
for all the languages)
6. a fm site should be a 'living' entity for that language and not
merely an archive
7. there must be someone driving the uptake and recruitment of writers
etc
8. there should be a way to address issues if a language version goes
awol - Brianna highlighted this point as it appears that wikipedia has
had similar concerns with some of their translations but there is no
real process for managing these issues

On the other side of this equation, is the fact that anyone can do
anything with the fm material. its free. they can set up there own
translations in any form. So what is it exactly they we are offering?

I think have a 'brand' - the floss manuals logo and the ideals that are
expressed through anything that is associated with the logo is what we
have to offer. Expanding the recognition of the brand increases the
awareness of the manuals, and this helps the uptake of free softwares -
its a very useful tool for our mission, and it has been demonstrated to
work quite effectlvely already ala the positive wikimania reaction to
the fm logo etc

So...I think that an interesting way forward with languages is to think
about them as franchises. I loathe to use marketing terminology but the
issues are represented well with this kind of framework. 

So. If we think about the languages as a franchise it would mean whoever
wants a fm lang site must:
	* pay for all the lang costs (servers etc)
	* agree to manage the language (getting new writers etc)
	* agree to some set of quality standards
	
If they agree to this then we set up a site for them, help with
translating the interface etcetcetc

Then they 'take control' of their language version and away they go. It
is a localisation of fm through a franchise agreement. This gives the
local language managers a lot of freedom to go in the the direction that
is most appropriate for their language. They, and we all, benefit by
adding to the profile of fm - this brings more readers, which helps the
uptake of free software etc.

if a language version of fm then strays for any reason - the organisers
lose interest or they decide to go commercial (ie. closing the docs and
selling them - an unlikely but possibility but still a possibility), or
somehow do something that dis not part of the fm ideals then we pull the
brand. Of course if someone doesn't want to agree to the fm 'franchise'
agreement, then they can still do whatever they want as the docs are
free, they just can't use the brand.

So...thats how I was thinking about it. At the moment I am writing a
financial sustainability plan for fm, so this is an important issue for
that also, so I would appreciate any thoughts on this...

adam















> where licensing is concerned i sway strongly in favour of the GPLv2/v3.
> while uncompromising in many respects it is a proven license and offers
> me (for instance) the convenience and simplicity of being able to bring 
> code and documentation together under equal distribution terms.
> 
> finally, congrats to Lotte for her fine work on the visual 'branding'. 
> it seems the project as a whole is greatly benefitting as a result.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> julian
> 
> Madrid, Spain.
> -- 
> http://julianoliver.com
> http://selectparks.net
> emails containing HTML will not be read.
> 
> ..on or around Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 08:14:29AM +0200, adam hyde said:
> > hey,
> > 
> > I just got back yessterday from Wikimania. The jet lag is still
> > lingering, but a few gins on the plane helped me with adjusting to the
> > timezones so I'm in not too bad shape.
> > 
> > The event was pretty amazing. I will write up a really detailed report
> > of it and post it here and on the FM news blog. I think also all talks
> > are going to be put online in audio and video although I am not sure
> > when.
> > 
> > So, for a quick report - the event was very focused on all things
> > wikimedia (the umbrella foundation for wikipedia and its associated
> > projects - wikimedia commons, wikiversity, wikibooks etc -
> > http://www.wikimedia.org/)  and mediawiki (the mediawiki tool that the
> > fouundation uses for all its projects - http://www.mediawiki.org/). 
> > 
> > The first day had some excellent speakers
> > (http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule). Every presentation
> > was very informative and some very inspiring moments. Lawrence Liangs
> > presentation about the 'authority of knowledge' was a highlight for me
> > on the first day. He spoke about how wikipedia could learn from the
> > demise of manuscipt culture at the birth of the print age. As I
> > understand it at the start of the print age, printed books were
> > considered as the most recent release of a body of work, and updating
> > these works and feeding into the content cycle of a book was common. As
> > an example Liang used Chaucers Canterbury Tales. The works were updated
> > by many people and were living breathing entities, however when he died
> > the works became his canon and were considered in some way 'frozen' by
> > the academics. Any edit of the text after his death was seen as
> > producing a defective edition. So the 'authoritative' point (the
> > canonisation of Chaucer by Academics) killed off the participatory
> > culture surrounding his texts. Liang was pointing this issue at
> > Wikipedia and the debate surrounding how Wikipedia might be striving to
> > attain an analogous 'authoritative' position. His point, I think, is
> > that the pursuit of wikipedia towards being an 'authoritative knowledge
> > object' is less interesting (and potentially troublesome as it may deter
> > contributions) than the methodology for creating knowledge that
> > wikipedia has established.
> > 
> > Also on the first day was Masayuki Hatta, another excellent talk. It was
> > small but on the button. Masayuki is a debian hacker from Japan, and he
> > was talking about the troubled Free Documentation License (FDL) that the
> > wikimedia foundation uses for its projects. He argues that the license
> > is inappropriate (many people at the event agree with this position) and
> > suggested that there is a big problem with changing the license because
> > under the FDL the person that created the document holds the copyright
> > and only they can relicense the content. We went through this process
> > too with fm a few months ago and thankfully everyone agreed to change to
> > the GPL. Evan Prodromou (http://wikitravel.org) suggested it might not
> > be necesary to get everyones permission as there has been several large
> > open source projects that have changed licenses without getting
> > permission from all contributers - an interesting point, but I think
> > that if Wikipedia did this it would be followed by a great deal of
> > controversy as consultation and 'doing things the right way' (not just
> > the expedient way) seems me to be regarded very highly in wikimedia
> > projects. So Masayuki, being a hacker, suggested a hack to get out of
> > the license. He suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation send an envoy to
> > the Free Software Foundation to speak to the redraft of the FDL
> > currently underway. Masayuki had been involved in a similar process for
> > the GPLv3 and said he was surprised that the FSF actually listened and
> > made some notable changes as a result.  So, Mayasukis hack included
> > lobbying the FSF to make the FDL compatible with other licenses (such as
> > some Creative Commons licenses) - this would allow for license
> > interoperability between the FDL and other licenses but also it would
> > allow for content currently covered by the FDL to be distributed under
> > the compatible license. This in effect opens a backdoor for the
> > Wikimedia foundation to slip out of and ditch the FDL in favour of
> > something more interesting.
> > 
> > I found this a pretty interesting strategy and Mayasuki and I will start
> > a mailing list to kick start this process. 
> > 
> > There were many other really great panels and presentations. Magnatune
> > (http://magnatune.com/) presented their interesting sales strategy for
> > CC licensed material. Essentially you can download the music for free of
> > buy it for a price you are happy with. This was interesting and I will
> > think of this further while I write the financial sustainability plan
> > for fm this month.
> >  
> > Dominic Chen presented the c-shirt project which allows you to remix a
> > t-shirt design from cc licensed material and they print out a t-shirt
> > for you. I made a pretty clumsy t-shirt from a road sign that said 'gpl'
> > and the wikipedia definition of floss. It was admittedly a pretty geeky
> > design, but I really appreciated the c-shirts attempts to make this
> > whole world of open licenses live beyond the screen.
> > 
> > I met some very cool people at the event and I found the 'wikimedians'
> > very supportive of non-wikimedia/non-mediawiki projects. The feedback
> > for what we are doing was immensely positive. I had taken a roll-up
> > banner to present fm with (will put some photos up), and printed some
> > 'free manuals for free software' t-shirts, had postcards, businesscards,
> > stickers, and buttons, and copies of the printed Audacity Manual...plus
> > I did 4 presentations of fm - 2 'poster sessions', 1 lightning talk, and
> > one workshop. 
> > 
> > The feedback on the design was huge. The buttons were so popular they
> > ran out in the first day. The stickers got stuck to everything from
> > laptops to the t-shirts of volunteers. I had a few people come up and
> > say the logo was 'hot'...hehe!...so, I think we can pat Lotte on the
> > back (I'll do it in about 30 mins when she wakes up ;). 
> > 
> > I had many people wanting the Audacity book, I didnt have many so I was
> > a bit hesitant to hand them out as it was good to have them to show
> > people what kind of work we are doing.  I gave 3 away and will send
> > another 4 to people that are interested.
> > 
> > There was interest about the remixing function from quite a few people.
> > Christoph Sauer from WikiCreole (http://www.wikicreole.org/) took a very
> > close look at it and was very interested in how we did it and which
> > libraries we used etc. Also, Kim Tucker from the Meraka Institute in
> > South Africa was very interested in the HTML export functionality and
> > said he will be in touch to explore how we might work together.
> > 
> > 2 discussions have begun to translate FM - into Hindi and Chinese.
> > Frankisy has emailed me a few times and he is forming a crew and a plan
> > to begin the Chinese translations.
> > 
> > A few people asked me about which manuals were available and I was happy
> > to talk to a few people specifically about the blender manual and the
> > forthcoming puredata manual. There is also interest in a fast forward of
> > a Gimp manual (which I am working on today) and Inkscape manual, to
> > perhaps assist people who want to contribute content to wikimedia
> > commons. There are alot of other discussions to follow up such as the
> > possibility of hosting a mediawiki user manual on fm, fms involvement in
> > the one laptop per child documentation writing, a jumpstart in the
> > mplayer manual (which needs a lot more content in my mind) and many
> > other threads. 
> > 
> > So, it was excellent for fm to be there and I can't really overstate how
> > proud I was to be presenting us there. Being at Wikimania not only
> > opened my eyes to a lot of what is going on in the wiki world, but it
> > opened others eyes to the great job we are doing, and it reinforced my
> > belief that we are on the right track and doing a great job. 
> > 
> > So congratulations to everyone :))) 
> > 
> > We also have some new members to this list who I met at the
> > event...welcome!
> > 
> > I will write up a full report. I have some jet lag to get through and a
> > huge to-do. Tomorrow I also go to Croatia for a week. I will use it as
> > an opportunity to write up the report and also to focus on the financial
> > sustainability plan for fm. 
> > 
> > So busy busy... 
> > 
> > :)
> > 
> > adam
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > 
> > 
> > adam hyde
> > floss manuals
> > 
> > free manuals for free software
> > http://www.flossmanuals.net
> > 
> > mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
> > email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> 
-- 


adam hyde
floss manuals

free manuals for free software
http://www.flossmanuals.net

mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
email : adam at flossmanuals.net