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Posted to dev@subversion.apache.org by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net> on 2018/09/05 19:39:24 UTC
The future of the Subversion book
Hello, all!
It's been a long while since I interacted with any degree of regularity
with this community, and I've had to come to terms with some essential
truths.
First, my time as an active Subversion developer has *definitely*
passed. Oh, I may get a chance to return to it at some point in the
(likely distant) future, but without CollabNet commissioning my efforts
here, I simply don't have the extra cycles these days to offer. Given
that my contributions over the last few years can be measured in the
smallest of numbers, this isn't news to anyone here and certainly has no
effect on the trajectory and velocity of the project!
Of greater concern to (at least) myself is that the cognitive distance I
have from Subversion these days -- combined with the craziness of just
life as an twice-employed[1], soccer-coaching, father of three -- means
that the Subversion book is getting next-to-zero attention, too. Oh,
I'm still paying attention to the work our translators are doing, and
wordsmithing here and there as concerns are raised. But the
(as-yet-unfinished) trunk of the book is still attached to Subversion
1.8, which means that this community has pounded out all kinds of
improvements whose documentation is mostly limited to release notes and
email threads. Put simply, the service that Ben and Fitz (both looooong
gone from contributing to the book at all) and I formerly offered to the
wider Subversion community has arguably now become a disservice.
I'm done telling myself that I can fix this by re-engaging and taking up
authorship again. That just isn't gonna happen. It's time to pass the
torch to someone else, and I would love to immediately begin tossing
around some ideas toward this end.
To be clear, red-bean.com is happy to continue hosting the book's
HTML/PDF builds. The source lives at SourceForge these days, and I can
grant commit permissions (or transfer ownership) as needed. Moreover,
there's no deadline for maintainership handoff that I'm trying to impose
or anything. I want to do what's best for the Subversion ecosystem,
whatever this community determines that to be.
Feel free to consider alternate approaches, too, such as conversion of
the book's content into a Wiki. But I would caution against doing
anything that discourages or complicates the workflow of the book's
translators, especially since they are the only ones actually doing
anything in the project at all! :-)
So what do you think?
-- Mike
[1] Beyond my regular CollabNet work week, I give additional hours as a
member of the staff of my local church.
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Pavel Lyalyakin <pa...@visualsvn.com>.
Hello,
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:39 PM, C. Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net> wrote:
>
> Hello, all!
>
> It's been a long while since I interacted with any degree of regularity with this community, and I've had to come to terms with some essential truths.
>
> First, my time as an active Subversion developer has *definitely* passed. Oh, I may get a chance to return to it at some point in the (likely distant) future, but without CollabNet commissioning my efforts here, I simply don't have the extra cycles these days to offer. Given that my contributions over the last few years can be measured in the smallest of numbers, this isn't news to anyone here and certainly has no effect on the trajectory and velocity of the project!
>
> Of greater concern to (at least) myself is that the cognitive distance I have from Subversion these days -- combined with the craziness of just life as an twice-employed[1], soccer-coaching, father of three -- means that the Subversion book is getting next-to-zero attention, too. Oh, I'm still paying attention to the work our translators are doing, and wordsmithing here and there as concerns are raised. But the (as-yet-unfinished) trunk of the book is still attached to Subversion 1.8, which means that this community has pounded out all kinds of improvements whose documentation is mostly limited to release notes and email threads. Put simply, the service that Ben and Fitz (both looooong gone from contributing to the book at all) and I formerly offered to the wider Subversion community has arguably now become a disservice.
>
> I'm done telling myself that I can fix this by re-engaging and taking up authorship again. That just isn't gonna happen. It's time to pass the torch to someone else, and I would love to immediately begin tossing around some ideas toward this end.
>
> To be clear, red-bean.com is happy to continue hosting the book's HTML/PDF builds. The source lives at SourceForge these days, and I can grant commit permissions (or transfer ownership) as needed. Moreover, there's no deadline for maintainership handoff that I'm trying to impose or anything. I want to do what's best for the Subversion ecosystem, whatever this community determines that to be.
>
> Feel free to consider alternate approaches, too, such as conversion of the book's content into a Wiki. But I would caution against doing anything that discourages or complicates the workflow of the book's translators, especially since they are the only ones actually doing anything in the project at all! :-)
>
> So what do you think?
>
> -- Mike
>
>
> [1] Beyond my regular CollabNet work week, I give additional hours as a
> member of the staff of my local church.
A bit off-topic for this thread, but I want to say that I'd love
SVNBook to move to SVN 1.10 version. There are several open
milesone-1.8 tickets[1], though and 1.8 version needs a read-through
before branching[2].
The progress is tracked here[3] and if - I'm not mistaken - the Step
3: Review Subcommands/Options can be considered Done.
[1]: https://sourceforge.net/p/svnbook/tickets/milestone/en-1.8/?filter=%7B%22status%22%3A[%22New%22%2C%22Started%22]%7D
[2]: https://www.red-bean.com/pipermail/svnbook-dev/2016-March/016318.html
[3]: https://sourceforge.net/p/svnbook/wiki/SvnBook18Status/
--
With best regards,
Pavel Lyalyakin
VisualSVN Team
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Nathan Hartman <ha...@gmail.com>.
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 4:49 PM Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be contributed
> to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository? Many people seem
> to post questions and issues in these mailing lists as if it is part of the
> project anyway so maybe we ought to just make this the reality. I guess
> what I am saying is, before we gauge opinion on whether we want to bring
> this into the project, my question is whether there are any blockers that
> prevent this on the book side from being an option? Such as copyright or
> licensing issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been
> discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate from the
> project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly was in the past,
> but I no longer recall them.
I know we're not gauging opinions yet but I think the book should be
consolidated into the official Apache Subversion project. It would be a
boost to both efforts for many reasons. Furthermore having the
documentation presented on the same website is much more sensible and
professional from a user perspective. It would also help in a future
redesign of the website, as the documentation section would be thorough and
quite complete.
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Branko Čibej <br...@apache.org>.
On 30.10.2018 14:33, Michael Pilato wrote:
> On 10/27/18 1:12 PM, Branko Čibej wrote:
>> On 18.10.2018 20:40, Branko Čibej wrote:
>>> On 06.09.2018 15:25, Branko Čibej wrote:
>>>> On 06.09.2018 15:10, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> >>>>
>>>>> The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
>>>>> the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
>>>>> PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
>>>>> mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
>>>>> it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
>>>>> Subversion itself was)?
> >>>
>>>> We'd have to ask legal@ but I'd be surprised if we'd be required to
>>>> re-license the book; it's not code, and the Apache license isn't really
>>>> suitable. Also we wouldn't really be making releases of it, just updates
>>>> on the web.
>>> I didn't quite forget about this: LEGAL-421
>> The answer to this question appears to be that we should relicense the
>> book before importing it into our repository. I suppose that means the
>> original authors, and any other major contributors, should create a
>> Software Grant.
> I don't expect that there would be any problem getting Fitz and Ben to
> join me in such an exercise. There's no question in my mind that we
> hold between the three of us the lion's (and tiger's, and bear's, oh
> my!) share of the authorship of the English text of the book.
>
> How does this affect the translations, though? Besides the old
> translations long since completed (or abandoned), we have a handful of
> active translations ongoing -- some doing their initial passes over the
> text, some simply touching up their translations as changes are made in
> the English originals. What is the impact on translators in the event
> that the book's development moves into the Apache Subversion repository?
I'm sure we can give them (partial) commit access to the book, if
they're willing to relicense in the same way. We'll need an ICLA from
any of them who're not Apache committers yet, of course. I don't see
that contributing to book translations is any different from
contributing to other parts of our source tree. We've been doing
something similar for message translators for ... what is it now, 18
years and counting? (Yes, Subversion is now of "legal age," whatever
that means...)
-- Brane
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net>.
On 10/27/18 1:12 PM, Branko Čibej wrote:
> On 18.10.2018 20:40, Branko Čibej wrote:
>> On 06.09.2018 15:25, Branko Čibej wrote:
>>> On 06.09.2018 15:10, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
>>>> the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
>>>> PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
>>>> mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
>>>> it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
>>>> Subversion itself was)?
>>>
>>> We'd have to ask legal@ but I'd be surprised if we'd be required to
>>> re-license the book; it's not code, and the Apache license isn't really
>>> suitable. Also we wouldn't really be making releases of it, just updates
>>> on the web.
>>
>> I didn't quite forget about this: LEGAL-421
>
> The answer to this question appears to be that we should relicense the
> book before importing it into our repository. I suppose that means the
> original authors, and any other major contributors, should create a
> Software Grant.
I don't expect that there would be any problem getting Fitz and Ben to
join me in such an exercise. There's no question in my mind that we
hold between the three of us the lion's (and tiger's, and bear's, oh
my!) share of the authorship of the English text of the book.
How does this affect the translations, though? Besides the old
translations long since completed (or abandoned), we have a handful of
active translations ongoing -- some doing their initial passes over the
text, some simply touching up their translations as changes are made in
the English originals. What is the impact on translators in the event
that the book's development moves into the Apache Subversion repository?
-- Mike
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Branko Čibej <br...@apache.org>.
On 18.10.2018 20:40, Branko Čibej wrote:
> On 06.09.2018 15:25, Branko Čibej wrote:
>> On 06.09.2018 15:10, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
>>> On 09/05/2018 04:49 PM, Mark Phippard wrote:
>>>> Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be
>>>> contributed to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository?
>>>> Many people seem to post questions and issues in these mailing lists
>>>> as if it is part of the project anyway so maybe we ought to just
>>>> make this the reality. I guess what I am saying is, before we gauge
>>>> opinion on whether we want to bring this into the project, my
>>>> question is whether there are any blockers that prevent this on the
>>>> book side from being an option? Such as copyright or licensing
>>>> issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been
>>>> discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate
>>>> from the project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly
>>>> was in the past, but I no longer recall them.
>>> Honestly, I think the book belongs with the PMC. It is easy to imagine a
>>> day when a developer is expected to provide at least rudimentary
>>> documentation updates in the same commit that carries his or her new
>>> feature or behavioral change.
>>>
>>> The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
>>> the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
>>> PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
>>> mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
>>> it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
>>> Subversion itself was)?
>> We'd have to ask legal@ but I'd be surprised if we'd be required to
>> re-license the book; it's not code, and the Apache license isn't really
>> suitable. Also we wouldn't really be making releases of it, just updates
>> on the web.
>
> I didn't quite forget about this: LEGAL-421
The answer to this question appears to be that we should relicense the
book before importing it into our repository. I suppose that means the
original authors, and any other major contributors, should create a
Software Grant.
-- Brane
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Branko Čibej <br...@apache.org>.
On 06.09.2018 15:25, Branko Čibej wrote:
> On 06.09.2018 15:10, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
>> On 09/05/2018 04:49 PM, Mark Phippard wrote:
>>> Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be
>>> contributed to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository?
>>> Many people seem to post questions and issues in these mailing lists
>>> as if it is part of the project anyway so maybe we ought to just
>>> make this the reality. I guess what I am saying is, before we gauge
>>> opinion on whether we want to bring this into the project, my
>>> question is whether there are any blockers that prevent this on the
>>> book side from being an option? Such as copyright or licensing
>>> issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been
>>> discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate
>>> from the project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly
>>> was in the past, but I no longer recall them.
>> Honestly, I think the book belongs with the PMC. It is easy to imagine a
>> day when a developer is expected to provide at least rudimentary
>> documentation updates in the same commit that carries his or her new
>> feature or behavioral change.
>>
>> The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
>> the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
>> PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
>> mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
>> it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
>> Subversion itself was)?
> We'd have to ask legal@ but I'd be surprised if we'd be required to
> re-license the book; it's not code, and the Apache license isn't really
> suitable. Also we wouldn't really be making releases of it, just updates
> on the web.
I didn't quite forget about this: LEGAL-421
-- Brane
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Branko Čibej <br...@apache.org>.
On 06.09.2018 15:10, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> On 09/05/2018 04:49 PM, Mark Phippard wrote:
>> Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be
>> contributed to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository?
>> Many people seem to post questions and issues in these mailing lists
>> as if it is part of the project anyway so maybe we ought to just
>> make this the reality. I guess what I am saying is, before we gauge
>> opinion on whether we want to bring this into the project, my
>> question is whether there are any blockers that prevent this on the
>> book side from being an option? Such as copyright or licensing
>> issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been
>> discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate
>> from the project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly
>> was in the past, but I no longer recall them.
>
> Honestly, I think the book belongs with the PMC. It is easy to imagine a
> day when a developer is expected to provide at least rudimentary
> documentation updates in the same commit that carries his or her new
> feature or behavioral change.
>
> The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
> the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
> PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
> mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
> it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
> Subversion itself was)?
We'd have to ask legal@ but I'd be surprised if we'd be required to
re-license the book; it's not code, and the Apache license isn't really
suitable. Also we wouldn't really be making releases of it, just updates
on the web.
-- Brane
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net>.
On 09/05/2018 04:49 PM, Mark Phippard wrote:
> Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be
> contributed to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository?
> Many people seem to post questions and issues in these mailing lists
> as if it is part of the project anyway so maybe we ought to just
> make this the reality. I guess what I am saying is, before we gauge
> opinion on whether we want to bring this into the project, my
> question is whether there are any blockers that prevent this on the
> book side from being an option? Such as copyright or licensing
> issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been
> discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate
> from the project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly
> was in the past, but I no longer recall them.
Honestly, I think the book belongs with the PMC. It is easy to imagine a
day when a developer is expected to provide at least rudimentary
documentation updates in the same commit that carries his or her new
feature or behavioral change.
The book carries a cc-by-2.0 license, with Ben, Fitz and myself named as
the copyright holders. I suspect that in order to be absorbed by the
PMC, that licensing would have to change to an Apache License. Does that
mean that the three primary authors would need to officially re-license
it somehow? Or maybe it's a software grant to the ASF (rather like
Subversion itself was)?
I don't know.
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com>.
On Sep 5, 2018, at 3:39 PM, C. Michael Pilato <cm...@collab.net> wrote:
> To be clear, red-bean.com is happy to continue hosting the book's HTML/PDF builds. The source lives at SourceForge these days, and I can grant commit permissions (or transfer ownership) as needed. Moreover, there's no deadline for maintainership handoff that I'm trying to impose or anything. I want to do what's best for the Subversion ecosystem, whatever this community determines that to be.
>
> Feel free to consider alternate approaches, too, such as conversion of the book's content into a Wiki. But I would caution against doing anything that discourages or complicates the workflow of the book's translators, especially since they are the only ones actually doing anything in the project at all! :-)
>
> So what do you think?
First off, thank you for maintaining the book for as long as you have.
Assuming the PMC wanted it, is it possible for the book to be contributed to this project and hosted in the Apache SVN repository? Many people seem to post questions and issues in these mailing lists as if it is part of the project anyway so maybe we ought to just make this the reality. I guess what I am saying is, before we gauge opinion on whether we want to bring this into the project, my question is whether there are any blockers that prevent this on the book side from being an option? Such as copyright or licensing issues that make it not possible. It feels like this has been discussed in the past and there were reasons it was kept separate from the project even after the publishing of the book by O'Reilly was in the past, but I no longer recall them.
Mark
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by "C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net>.
On 09/05/2018 04:10 PM, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> Can we identify specific tasks that interested volunteers can pick up?
>
> Initial draft:
>
> - Respond to bug reports as they come in
> - Liaise with translators
> - Add content about <specific feature> from the <1.8/1.9/1.10/1.11> release
> - Bring the book up-to-speed with _all_ new features since 1.8 or 1.9 (?)
> - Go through the issue tracker backlog (is there one?)
Your list is a pretty complete one. I'd add, perhaps, "Maintain the
website" (which implies ensuring that the nightly builds are working).
Yes, there is an issue tracker:
https://sourceforge.net/p/svnbook/tickets/
I've used the issue tracker not merely for bug reports, but also for the
work of trying to update the text with respect to new features or
behaviors as new Subversion releases come out.
The milestones in the tracker are pretty straightforward: "en-1.8" is
something that needs to be fixed in the English version of the book that
covers Subversion 1.8, e.g. (You won't find "en-1.9" -- I'd planned to
skip the 1.9 version and go straight to 1.10.) I also have a "whenever"
milestone for stuff that can isn't tied to a specific version, and an
"unlikely" milestone for stuff that I was on the fence about even
entertaining.
I also used the project's wiki tool to track the high-level
documentation process:
https://sourceforge.net/p/svnbook/wiki/ProjectOverview/
If you cruise over some of the pages there, you'll see the exact process
that I (and formerly Ben, Fitz, and others) used to manage the
documentation of each new version of Subversion.
-- Mike
Re: The future of the Subversion book
Posted by Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>.
C. Michael Pilato wrote on Wed, 05 Sep 2018 15:39 -0400:
> To be clear, red-bean.com is happy to continue hosting the book's
> HTML/PDF builds. The source lives at SourceForge these days, and I can
> grant commit permissions (or transfer ownership) as needed. Moreover,
> there's no deadline for maintainership handoff that I'm trying to impose
> or anything. I want to do what's best for the Subversion ecosystem,
> whatever this community determines that to be.
>
> Feel free to consider alternate approaches, too, such as conversion of
> the book's content into a Wiki. But I would caution against doing
> anything that discourages or complicates the workflow of the book's
> translators, especially since they are the only ones actually doing
> anything in the project at all! :-)
>
> So what do you think?
Can we identify specific tasks that interested volunteers can pick up?
Initial draft:
- Respond to bug reports as they come in
- Liaise with translators
- Add content about <specific feature> from the <1.8/1.9/1.10/1.11> release
- Bring the book up-to-speed with _all_ new features since 1.8 or 1.9 (?)
- Go through the issue tracker backlog (is there one?)
Thanks for all your book work over the years!
Daniel