Re: Boilerplate License Revision Proposal

[Miroslav Skoric <m.skoric@EUnet.yu>]

Poet/Joshua Drake wrote:
> 
> This is not a defect as when the document becomes unmaintained and/or
> obsolete it need to be "re-written" anyway. Therefore there would be no
> copyright issues.
> 

That case, is it a new maintainer obliged to give a credit to previous
author(s), at least to mention previous author(s) name(s), or to include
a (part of) previous version of a document within the 'new' one?

> >I would argue that regarding benefits to the author, there is not a
> >great deal to be gained in selling the exclusive right to publish if
> >such work is first (weeks in advance of the work appearing in
> >bookstores) put on the Internet at the 200 LDP mirror sites.
> 
> I don't believe this to be true, both O'reilly and OpenDocs have had great
> success with it.
> 

Not sure what did you mean of their great success with it. Let me know
more details (email please if you don't want do this via this list).

> 
> This is the ultimate question. Currently about 40% of my revenue comes
> from technical writing. All of which is free on the net. If I were to put
> my mind to it, I could probably make it 70%.
> 

Well, if you make your 40% from the free stuff it's not bad. 

> Personally I like electronic documentation, but I don't like it when I
> have to wade through a 500 page PDF.
> 

Yep. A 500 page hard-cover book is not always easy too. But PDF's are
easier to 'search' or 'grep' :-)

> Most publishers will not attempt to publish a document if the grammar is
> so bad they would have to pay an editor for 6 months to fix it. O.k. 6
> months would be a HUGE book but you get the point.
> 

But, what if some 'writers' (aka editors) are so patient to supply our
free documents and spend their time fixing it, and after this job is
finished they just publish the job as their own?

Misko



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