[scribus] ANNOUNCEMENT: Scribus - The Official Manual is now available for sale!

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi,

There has been a (probably unnecessary) discussion about the manual being "closed" and making profits.

With respect to openness, the content of the manual is released under the Open Documentation Licence. It's _exactly_ the same licence as the one used for the documentation that's shipped with Scribus. Without going into details here, it means you can do almost anything you want with the content, except publishing it as a printed book. Of course it's harder to copy and paste from a printed page ;) , but the content can nevertheless be re-used and even changed, according to the licence. You can read the licence in the Scribus help browser under "Other Information".

Why did we choose the ODL and not a CC licence? To make it compatible with the other documentation in Scribus. This means that the content of the manual or parts of it may eventually find their way into the help browser, but this wasn't our priority.

Our priority was to create a _printed_ manual, as we felt this was one of the most requested "features". The whole setup of the manual project was for print, for a book that you can hold in your hands, read in the train etc. It has references, a glossary, an index, in other words: everything you expect from a real book. We also think that it can easily be read from the beginning to the end, while it can also be used as a reference manual, and our writing style has been chosen accordingly.

Now we can think about the next steps. Producing a PDF version for download is not as easy as it seems, because the file would be huge, even if we'd scale the images down to a resolution that would make them useless. We also used some non-free fonts that can't be embedded into a PDF file, as the licence doesn't permit. We could, of course, simply convert all fonts to outlines, but this won't be as useful as a searchable PDF. So the electronic version will require some extra time and tinkering. If and how this will be made available, remains to be seen. For those who are curious about the content and/or the layout, I will produce a PDF file that contains the table of contents and a sample chapter. The PDF will be available at flesbooks.com and scribus.net SOON.

It's even more complex with HTML files, because the layout of the book is a print layout (surprise, surprise). Thus, creating an attractive HTML version that can be displayed by our help browser will require even more time. Since we worked like maniacs to finish the print version before Christmas, we need some rest now ;) And since we are already working on the manual for Scribus 1.4, which is an even more monumental task than creating the current version, we have to set priorities, especially if one considers that the next generation of the manual will also be translated and some of the authors (including me) are translators as well.

As for money and profits: It's true that millions are losing their jobs these days. That's sad, but the publisher, the ISBN agency, the printer etc. won't work for free, even if we do our best to convince them to. Also, setting up the non-profit organisation costs money. While we spent (and continue to spend) a considerable amount of unpaid time on the documentation, the least we can expect is a compensation for our costs. If we could give away the manual for free, we certainly would. We were lucky to find a friendly and cooperative publisher who set up a contract that allows the Scribus project to earn some money in order to support further development. The Scribus team won't become rich that way, but perhaps we can buy a new server when necessary or fund the travelling of team members when they are attending a conference.

Finally, free (libre) doesn't necessarily mean gratis, and receiving money for work doesn't mean "closed". Ask Richard Stallman ;)

Christoph
-- 
Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger