[OpenLayers-Users] OpenLayers Book

[David Fawcett]

I would be happy to kick in $25 - $50 to support the production of
documentation.  Instead of making access to documentation subject to a
donation, I would rather have any donation money leveraged by making
more documentation available to as many people as possible.  People
who have never used OpenLayers, people looking for a new solution,
etc.  Evangelism vs subscription.

I understand what Chris is saying.  Some people get off on coding and
are willing to spend their personal time writing code for a project
that they think is worth while.  These same people may not find the
same pleasure in writing documentation.  (not many people do...)

I think that the key to grass roots documentation development is to
encourage people who are OpenLayers users who are not core developers,
who want to give something back to the project to write documentation.
 While it would be cool to have a paper book, it would start to become
out of date as soon as it was published.  The same amount of resources
and time, contributed by a larger group of people, could create (and
maintain) some really great web-based documentation.

David.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Brad Spencer <brad at cubewerx.com.au> wrote:
> I think this is a great initiative and thanks to all those involved!
>
> Whilst documentation is important to have, I agree that the authors should
> not go unrewarded. I would be happy to pay an amount of dollars that I would
> otherwise pay for a book which ends up collecting dust (well most of them).
> Say a $US 50 to get access to the website? If all OL applications developers
> did this we would be collectively giving back just a small piece of the huge
> benefits of using OL in the first place. I wonder how many others out there
> would be prepared to donate this amount?
>
> Cheers, Brad....
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: users-bounces at openlayers.org [mailto:users-bounces at openlayers.org] On
> Behalf Of Christopher Schmidt
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 9:49 AM
> To: Chip Taylor
> Cc: users at openlayers.org
> Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Users] OpenLayers Book
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 02:31:14PM -0800, Chip Taylor wrote:
>> Just curious about your statement "I don't think we should take it upon
>> ourselves to waste beautiful Saturdays generating documentation for free
>> (person opinion)."  Why would you "waste your beautiful Saturdays"
>> generating code for free then?
>
> I think the same sentiment applies to code. The idea is that there
> should not be an expectation from the community that all this hard work
> comes for free -- a sentiment that many seem to express. (In fact, this
> whole thread started off by someone volunteering me to write a book.)
>
>>  Open Source is cool, Open Source is fun but
>> there has to be a reason for a person to make that effort to develop the
>> software.  Most times that reason is the pride in a job well done and the
>> appreciation one feels when you see your efforts being used.
>
> And sometimes, it needs to be more than that. In other words, "If you
> really love the software, support it: financially, documentation wise,
> code wise, or whatever, rather than expecting things to magically happen
> from the people who have supported the project in the past."
>
> I can't speak for Tim directly here, but that is the impression I get.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Christopher Schmidt
> MetaCarta
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