[FM Discuss] Forking an official manual for translation in FM?

[Daniel James]

Hi Mick,

> Case in point do we need permission to reuse material in the  Audacity
> team's manual. which is currently
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

You don't need permission, but you're right to ask first. Some Free
Software project contributors supplement their income by writing a book
for a popular tool. GIMP and Audacity both have had many millions of
downloads, so there is a market for books there. Some (but not all)
publishers of books on Free Software allow their books to be released
under open content licenses.

There are only a limited number of people who will actively contribute
to any given free-licensed manual. These books are usually a labour of
love, even if the author is getting a small advance from a commercial
publisher. So by starting another manual, and recruiting helpers, you
may be treading on the toes of a core project contributor without realising.

> I like the idea of creating the Audacity Workbook - as personally that
> is exactly what I want to create. I also think that online manual
> maintainers will get that more than a perceive duplicate manual.

Right, it's best to identify any gaps in provision first. If you are
writing courseware, I suppose you need to target it towards one
particular teaching system, but make it adaptable for other systems.

I'd suggest asking on the Audacity users list for contacts from people
that are training people on that program, and ask them what they need in
a workbook. Clickable audio samples (the course materials) spring to mind.

Cheers!

Daniel