Re: [Audacity-devel] Audacity 1.4.0 Manual
A free multi-track audio editor and recorder
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From: Vaughan J. <va...@au...> - 2007-01-02 01:16:50
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Robin, sounds great to me! Splendid ideas and ethics. We'll discuss. Thanks for your interest in Audacity. Happy New Year! -Vaughan Robin 'Roblimo' Miller wrote: >> It would be very useful to be able to point users of the beta versions >> to the manual, even in it's current unfinished state in order to explain >> new features and the like, as well as getting feedback, however Gale and >> I are reluctant to do so until a read-only face is available, so we >> don't end up with a large pool of relatively ill-informed people making >> edits to the manual with no real control. >> > > Here's another, additional thought about making an Audacity manual. > > OSTG (owner of SourceForge.net) and Pearson (Prentice Hall, Wiley, Sams, > Que, etc.) recently signed a deal to create SourceForge.net Press. This > deal, while no secret, has not yet been publicized. > > We're going to use PoD (Print on Demand) and eBook technology to produce > professional-quality manuals for fast-moving open source projects. And > any manuals that look they'll be popular enough for real print runs and > traditional book retailing... POOF! We turn the switch and those titles > appear in major bookstores far faster than is possible with current > print book publishing. > > We had a little editorial teleconference just before Christmas, with > OSTG editors and Prentice Hall editors on the phone, and our consensus > was that Audacity would be a great first title for SourceForge Press. > > Some of this is bias: everybody who was on that call uses Audacity and > likes it. :) > > But the rest of the judgment was based on our belief that Audacity can > and should be much more popular than it is, and that a > professionally-produced manual with OSTG's and Pearson's combined sales > muscle behind it would help make it so. > > This could also be a source of income for the project and/or for > individual "inner circle" developers and the current documentation > producers, since we will pay substantial royalties. > > We can either supply a co-author or Audacity people can do the writing > (which is really already being done on the wiki), while we do the > editing/design/marketing. > > Note that we are not necessarily going to stick to standard book > publisher copyright; Mark Taub, on the Pearson side of the deal, has > handled a number of books (including the Bruce Perens series) release > under Creatice Commons and Free Documentation licenses. And our attitude > toward DRM is that we hate it ourselves, and a SourceForge/Slashdot-type > audience is going to break it anyway, so let's not. :) > > So how about it? Interested? You can reply off-list, although we're > perfectly happy to have the entire book development process, include $$ > negotiations, take place on an archived, public list. > > Happy New Year! > > Robin 'Roblimo' Miller > Editor in Chief, OSTG > > |