Placing "Gears" on autopilot

  • Thread starter Thread starter halkun
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
H

halkun

Guest
Well, My school term started up again. No more Gears updates for a while. I was wondering if you guys could help me.

I think there is enough information in Gears right now to make a few public "leaks" about it. If you have any other forums you frequent, I would like for you guys to drop a note about Gears and a link to my website directory where it's located. I want to see if Gears can go on "Autopilot" with contibuters. I remember someone here saying that a wiki might be a good idea. I have no problem with someone starting one.

I once again re-iterate that the reason why the .DOC version of gears exists on my page is because it allows anyone to download the text and edit it in everyone's favorite Microsoft Word Prossessor. If you want to edit a section, cut that section out of Gears, edit it, and send the changes to the document to me.  I can then import them back into gears again. My source word prossesor is OpenOffice.Org.

Gears will be released under the GNU Free Documentation License. You can read a copy of the licence here.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

I'll be placing the licence into Gears very soon.

Help get out the word. If you do want to help and be a "town cryer" for Gears, let them know that it's still very alpha and not complete. There is enough here to start hacking. All the archive formats are pretty much documented and we have a good idea of what's where for the most part. We have the tools to overturn stones now, we just need to write down what's under them. Post in some good emulation/gaming/rpg news boards. Don't spam though. It's nice to make a good impression.

I also compress the pdf to keep people from streaming it from my sucky bandwith. I also have a "screenshot" too in case anyone wants to use one for advertisement.

I have Marketing to do now (Gag!) so I'll be around...

-Halkun

Gears:
http://the-afterm.ath.cx/gears/
 
As a first suggestion, drop the idea of using the FDL. Firstly, and most importantly, you'd need the permission of everybody who contributed copyrightable material towards the document. You don't have that.

Technically, of course, you'll need that permission no matter WHAT license you release it under. That just brings us onto the second problem, which is why getting that permission is going to be near impossible...

...beacuse the FDL is far, far too restrictive, and doesn't accomplish half what people think it does. Just to start with, if I download Gears into my My Documents folder (home folder, if I were running Linux), I've just violated the FDL. Copy it onto a flash drive to take around to a friends house? Depending on the type of flash drive, also an FDL violation.  Print part of it out for a friend? FDL violation.

Think about what you're trying to achieve. And also that you'll have to convince everybody who provides content for the document to agree with you. If you just want a license that makes it obvious people can distribute it freely, use the BSD license. If you want to force people to keep future versions of it open, consider a Creative Commons license, or if you're feeling evil, the GPL.  Using the FDL is just like declaring you're trying to catch people out and make them break the license.
 
*announcer voice* ...next time, on Ficedula, Attorney at Law, 8PM on NBC!!!
 
It's amazing how much more attention I started paying to legal matters when my job (and, therefore, my supply of DVDs and books...) started to depend on it... :P
 
Ficedula
I can see your prorities DVD's and books Fice hehehehe

Halkun
How about lets do things this way?
People submit information to it, the information gets reviewed and edited then sent back to the submitter for technical acuracy.  Finally it gets one last edit pass and then gets incorperated.   Editors are volunteers (not necessarily you for example).  Contributers can be anyone.  You however have the final say if it's worth including into gears.
This will keep your work down, and all you need to do is ocassionally add or remove information from gears itself.  Grammer and 'sense' is handled by the editors (I suggest a different editor at each phase to keep things correct).  It's a bit slower but it means the contributions and updates will be steady.

Also you need to have a revision system. That way people who contribute know what revision there information was and is inserted in and everything can be tracked including who provided what.

In the end you have ultimate control over this. It also means that all the english is reviewed by two other people other than the author.  I've found I make mistakes, of which I'm completely oblivious too.

Cyb
 
Passes the first tests; it lets you create a PDF file, and it lets me download it ... so we're already way ahead of the previous situation ;)

Looks OK to me; see if anyone else objects...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top