FLOSS Manuals presentation at Doctrain East

2. The FLOSS Manuals Story
...its just beginning!
Adam Hyde
Founder FM
You might know me from...

3. Polar Radio – Antarctica 2007
http://www.interpolar.org

4. Radio Astronomy
Online Radio Station Broadcasting Sounds of Space
http://www.radio-astronomy.net

5. Paper Cup Telephone Network
Global Network of Papercup Telephones
http://www.papercuptelephone.org

6. WHO WE ARE
1. Not-for-profit foundation (based in Amsterdam)
2. All volunteers
3. 3 'core' volunteers – co-ordinator, designer, programmer
4. Additional champions – Book Sprints / PR
5. 350 subscribed contributors
6. 100% open source
http://www.flossmanuals.net

7. HOW WE STARTED
1. TWiki
2. Most material written by me
3. Twisted TWiki to not think like a wiki
4. Custom plugins
5. Added beautiful design
6. Commissioned small number of artists to write some docs
7. Oct 2007 Launched

8. THE STATE OF FREE DOCUMENTATION
Its bad...often...
1. closed – platform (eg. CVS)
2. closed – format (eg. docbook)
3. closed – license (eg. standard copyright or FDL)
4. closed – org (publishers using open license / developers)
5. written by developers from memory
6. not maintained (out of date)
7. limited audience (eg. technical threshold of writing high)
8. hard to find
9. $ cost (pay to learn free software)

9. THE FUTURE OF FREE DOCUMENTATION
Its good!
1. open – platform (wiki)
2. open – format (xhtml)
3. open – license (GPL)
4. open – org (FLOSS MANUALS!!!)
5. written while using the software
6. maintained by community
7. wider audience
8. easy to find
9. free! (libre and gratis)

10. OUR AIM
“BE THE BEST SOURCE FOR
QUALITY INFORMATION
ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE”

11. WE NEED TO CREATE...
1. Platform
2. Community
3. Content
4. Free Documentation Sector

12. FREE DOCUMENTATION SECTOR
1. Needs internal recognition
2. Needs external recognition
3. Needs income models
4. Needs successful examples
5. Needs an ecology of skill sets
6. Needs to be fun, social, and have an impact

13. FLOSS MANUALS FEATURES
1. Easy to write (WYSIWYG)
2. Drag and drop index generation
3. One step publishing
4. CSS controlled book formatting
5. Remixing manuals
6. Copyright attribution
7. Translation tools
8. Localisation tools
9. Embeddable book store
10. Live manuals
11. Book sprint social models

14. 3 KEY FEATURES
1. Remix & Live Manuals
2. Embeddable Book Store
3. Book Sprints

15. THE FLOW – READ, WRITE, REMIX

16. LIVE MANUALS
1. Write manuals in FLOSS Manuals
2. Remix
3. Cut and paste few lines of HTML
4. Host the manual under your own domain
5. Community maintains material

17. EMBEDDED BOOK STORE
1. Host a book store
2. Supports & promotes the software
3. Income goes to development of documentation
4. Cut and paste a few lines into your site
5. User configurable :
1. Slide show
2. Random order
3. Paging
4. Number of displayed books
5. Which books to be displayed

18. BOOK SPRINTS
1. Develop communities around books
2. 5-6 writers onsite
3. Take care of food, accommodation, travel
4. Pre-production scoping of manuals
5. Build Index on first day
6. 4 days writing
7. 1 day editing / clean up

19. LINKS
1. FLOSS Manuals : http://www.flossmanuals.net
2. FLOSS Manuals Farsi : http://fa.flossmanuals.net
3. Remix : http://www.flossmanuals.net/remix
4. Book Store : http://www.flossmanuals.net/bookstore
5. Blog : http://www.flossmanuals.net/about

20. REGISTER NOW!
http://en.flossmanuals.net/register