[FM Discuss] floss manuals support

[Micz Flor]

On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 15:33 +0200, adam hyde wrote:

> So, to do this we need to grow. To grow we need resources. To get
> resources we need funders (and work). And to get funders (or work) we
> need you. 


hi everybody, find enclosed some honest praise. my feeling is that floss
manuals could really benefit from similar letters by other software
maintainers and developers who have their documentation hosted on your
site. if you only get half of the names to support you, you would have a
portfolio that would really help to open doors. all the best and get
some writing going! micz

--- snip ---

Re: Floss Manuals

Sourcefabric is a software development organisation aiming to provide
quality open source tools for journalism. We are a not-for-profit
organisation, based in Prague with branches in Berlin and Toronto. After
ten years in the field of open source development, we have recently
migrated all our documentation to Floss Manuals. 

Documentation is the first contact with most software. Open source
projects benefit from good documentation, since it can substitute
commercial support. In that sense Floss Manuals is invaluable to the
open source community by providing a professional, reliable and free
documentation tool. What has become very valuable to us is the
integration of the print on demand playout. Many of our client
organisations are in areas with limited Internet access and benefit from
a „solid“, offline manual in print. I would go as far as to point that
to us, this is one of the strongest features.

Floss Manuals also serves as a platform for open source projects by
providing a central point of entry to the open source world, bringing
together software from all areas such as audio editing, office tools,
CMS, CRM, vector graphics, etc. 

We are now also planning Book Sprints to tackle the issue of delivering
fully fledged documentation shortly after a software release. Usually,
the documentation writing requires a lot of time and energy. Working
with Floss Manuals and hiring their services for a Book Sprint, within a
week of your release you have a finished manual in the shop (literally).
The first will happen in October and will utilise their new software
Booki which we have been testing and are very excited about, especially
for the extended features regarding version numbers of software manuals.

We also see the Book Sprints as a way of returning some of the benefit
that Floss Manuals have brought to us. Building a business model on open
source solutions is a tough call and Floss Manuals at this stage relies
on Book Sprints, commissioned features and grants as a source of income.
We encourage anyone to pick up one of these possibilities to support
Floss Manuals for the great work they are doing - not only by providing
tools and hosting manuals, but also by strengthening the open source
paradigm. In simple words, Floss Manuals is on the move to become the
Sourceforge of the 21st century. Make sure you have a stake in the
movement. 

If you have any further questions, please contact me:
micz.flor at sourcefabric.org

Berlin, 20th July 2010

--

Micz Flor 
Directory of Communication, Sourcefabric
micz.flor at sourcefabric.org 

Sourcefabric 
Prinzessinnenstraße 20 
10969 Berlin, Germany 
DE +49 (0)30 44044999

www.sourcefabric.org 
www.twitter.com/Sourcefabric 
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