Re: Software Administration Guide and "forbidden content"

[Christopher Antila]

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On 23 January 2014 11:18:01 Pete Travis wrote:
>  Hi Guillermo,
>  
>  I came home last night and was met with a request on IRC from nb to remove
>  content referencing rpmfusion from the F14 Software Administration and
>  Musicians Guide. He was tasked to this by spot/Fedora Legal via IRC as
>  well, probably precipitated by the discussion on advisory-board@ .
>  
>  I thought a bit about the legal implications and the potential publicity
>  fallout of an engaged debate over our content, and in a knee-jerk reaction,
>  removed references to rpmfusion from web.git. Nick had prepped a patch for
>  the Musicians Guide that I merged forward. The Storage Administration Guide
>  clearly needed more work, and I unpublished it from F14 forward for now.
>  
>  So, I would like your thoughts on how to move forward. I can probably apply
>  some regex to substitute nonfunctional example repos, but my Spanish is
>  laughable at best.  I would like to work with you to resolve the immediate
>  issue as best as we can.  The same goes for the Musicians Guide.
>  
>  The greater question and its handling is a little distasteful, though.  I
>  dislike the communication through back channels and PMs, there has been
>  nothing like a policy declaration from Fedora Legal, and I'm continuing
>  that by changing content and mailing privately myself.  As much as I
>  believe in open communication,  I really don't want to see some tech
>  journalist or blogger pushing vitriolic headlines [...].  It seems better
>  to deal with the immediate issue quickly and quietly, then have an open
>  discussion on general policy once that work is done.
>  
>  Again, I apologize for yanking your work off docs.fp.o .  I do want to make
>  it right.
>  
>  --Pete 
I feel this has been more than *a little* distasteful. There are so many small 
things that could have been done differently to make this event more palatable. 
At minimum, the authors of affected guides could have been notified just before 
changes were made. A little better, the docs@ list should have been notified. 
Better still, we could have been given some length of time to remove the 
content ourselves.

As it is, at least in the Musicians' Guide, you didn't do a very good job (or 
"spot missed a spot"). The chapter called "Planet CCRMA at Home" is
about a 
third-party repository. The Qtractor chapter still refers to RPMFusion, and 
it's probably not the only one. Furthermore, as I previously mentioned, the 
Musicians' Guide's "Revision History" was not amended to indicate this 
certainly notable change in content.

Plus, I didn't publish the Musicians' Guide with Fedora 17 for a reason: it 
was out-of-date, and I didn't have the resources to fix that. Now we've 
published obsolete documentation for end-of-life software, making the web.git 
repository about 250 MiB larger in the process.

- From my position, there's not much to debate. If Fedora Legal officially decides 
(or has already officially decided) we can't refer to third-party repositories 
from official Fedora documentation, we must remove references to third-party 
repositories from official Fedora documentation. Until they do, or until someone 
points to a previous decision, I'm disinclined to make changes that will 
decrease the usefulness of the Musicians' Guide. A guide about software 
management would also probably be less useful if references to third-party 
repositories were removed.

In more than three years, nobody has said anything about the Fedora 14 
editions of these documents until now. An extra week, letting the guide owners 
sort things out, probably wouldn't have killed anyone. Unfortunately, a "knee-
jerk reaction" has killed openness and therefore accountability.

I've thought for a couple of days about how to respond. I accept what's 
happened and I can understand why it happened. I bear no grudges, and I'm open 
to making further changes as requested by the Fedora Legal team. I won't, 
however, engage in a discussion "behind closed doors" unless: (1) the door is 
clearly labeled, (2) the result of the conversation, along with the decision-
making process, is published publicly, and (3) we fear something greater than 
tech bloggers.


Christopher
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Software Administration Guide and "forbidden content"

[Pete Travis]

On 01/26/2014 01:36 PM, Christopher Antila wrote:
>  On 23 January 2014 11:18:01 Pete Travis wrote:
>  > Hi Guillermo,
>
>  > I came home last night and was met with a request on IRC from nb to
>  remove
>  > content referencing rpmfusion from the F14 Software Administration and
>  > Musicians Guide. He was tasked to this by spot/Fedora Legal via IRC as
>  > well, probably precipitated by the discussion on advisory-board@ .
>
>  > I thought a bit about the legal implications and the potential publicity
>  > fallout of an engaged debate over our content, and in a knee-jerk
>  reaction,
>  > removed references to rpmfusion from web.git. Nick had prepped a
>  patch for
>  > the Musicians Guide that I merged forward. The Storage
>  Administration Guide
>  > clearly needed more work, and I unpublished it from F14 forward for now.
>
>  > So, I would like your thoughts on how to move forward. I can
>  probably apply
>  > some regex to substitute nonfunctional example repos, but my Spanish is
>  > laughable at best.  I would like to work with you to resolve the
>  immediate
>  > issue as best as we can.  The same goes for the Musicians Guide.
>
>  > The greater question and its handling is a little distasteful,
>  though.  I
>  > dislike the communication through back channels and PMs, there has been
>  > nothing like a policy declaration from Fedora Legal, and I'm continuing
>  > that by changing content and mailing privately myself.  As much as I
>  > believe in open communication,  I really don't want to see some tech
>  > journalist or blogger pushing vitriolic headlines [...].  It seems
>  better
>  > to deal with the immediate issue quickly and quietly, then have an open
>  > discussion on general policy once that work is done.
>
>  > Again, I apologize for yanking your work off docs.fp.o .  I do want
>  to make
>  > it right.
>
>  > --Pete
>
>  I feel this has been more than *a little* distasteful. There are so
>  many small
>  things that could have been done differently to make this event more
>  palatable.
>  At minimum, the authors of affected guides could have been notified
>  just before
>  changes were made. A little better, the docs@ list should have been
>  notified.
>  Better still, we could have been given some length of time to remove the
>  content ourselves.
>
>  As it is, at least in the Musicians' Guide, you didn't do a very good
>  job (or
>  "spot missed a spot"). The chapter called "Planet CCRMA at Home" is
>  about a
>  third-party repository. The Qtractor chapter still refers to
>  RPMFusion, and
>  it's probably not the only one. Furthermore, as I previously
>  mentioned, the
>  Musicians' Guide's "Revision History" was not amended to indicate this
>  certainly notable change in content.
>
>  Plus, I didn't publish the Musicians' Guide with Fedora 17 for a
>  reason: it
>  was out-of-date, and I didn't have the resources to fix that. Now we've
>  published obsolete documentation for end-of-life software, making the
>  web.git
>  repository about 250 MiB larger in the process.
>
>  - From my position, there's not much to debate. If Fedora Legal
>  officially decides
>  (or has already officially decided) we can't refer to third-party
>  repositories
>  from official Fedora documentation, we must remove references to
>  third-party
>  repositories from official Fedora documentation. Until they do, or
>  until someone
>  points to a previous decision, I'm disinclined to make changes that will
>  decrease the usefulness of the Musicians' Guide. A guide about software
>  management would also probably be less useful if references to
>  third-party
>  repositories were removed.
>
>  In more than three years, nobody has said anything about the Fedora 14
>  editions of these documents until now. An extra week, letting the
>  guide owners
>  sort things out, probably wouldn't have killed anyone. Unfortunately,
>  a "knee-
>  jerk reaction" has killed openness and therefore accountability.
>
>  I've thought for a couple of days about how to respond. I accept what's
>  happened and I can understand why it happened. I bear no grudges, and
>  I'm open
>  to making further changes as requested by the Fedora Legal team. I won't,
>  however, engage in a discussion "behind closed doors" unless: (1) the
>  door is
>  clearly labeled, (2) the result of the conversation, along with the
>  decision-
>  making process, is published publicly, and (3) we fear something
>  greater than
>  tech bloggers.
>
>
>  Christopher 
The reaction from you and Eric here is one I will learn from. I do
believe in open communication on these things, from start to finish.  
In the future, we should ( and I will ) insist on bugs filed against
anything with legal complaints. It is obvious in retrospect, and I am
suitably embarrassed. I hope you can forgive my panic  :)

Moving forward, I would of course like to help with the content as
needed.  I won't barge into your Guide and start making changes on my
own, but do feel free to give me homework, create and assign bugs, whatever.

-- 
-- Pete Travis
 - Fedora Docs Project Leader
 - 'randomuser' on freenode
 - immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org

Software Administration Guide and "forbidden content"

[Eduardo A. Mayorga]

On 2014-01-26 21:55, Pete Travis wrote:

>  The reaction from you and Eric here is one I will learn from. I do
>  believe in open communication on these things, from start to finish.
>  In the future, we should ( and I will ) insist on bugs filed against
>  anything with legal complaints. It is obvious in retrospect, and I am
>  suitably embarrassed. I hope you can forgive my panic  :) 
I saw this stated in Docs Guidelines[1]:

"Software must be available in the official Fedora software repositories 
for the release of Fedora to which the documentation applies."

I clearly got this as "don't cover software from third party repos".

>  Moving forward, I would of course like to help with the content as
>  needed.  I won't barge into your Guide and start making changes on my
>  own, but do feel free to give me homework, create and assign bugs, 
>  whatever. 
I'm really interested in Musician's Guide. I was working on l10n stuff 
(into Spanish) but then I felt like it would not worth as it need to be 
updated. I have some ideas I'd like to bring, and these include a 
chapter about ChucK programming language[2], which could replace 
SuperCollider. But first of all, it has to be packaged.

[1] 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_Style_Guide_-_Fedora_Specific...
[2] http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
-- 
http://about.me/mayorgatellez