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Licence for the documentation
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-----------------------------
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Copyright © Open Object Press. All rights reserved.
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You may take an electronic copy of this publication and distribute it if you
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don't change the content in any way. You can also print a copy to be read by
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We have contracts with different publishers in different countries to sell and
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distribute paper or electronic based versions of this book (both translated and
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not) in bookstores. This helps to distribute and promote the Open ERP product.
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It also helps us to create incentives to pay contributors and authors using
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the authors rights for these sales.
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Due to this, grants to translate, modify or sell this book are strictly
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forbidden, unless Tiny SPRL (representing Open Object Press) gives you
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written authorisation for this.
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Many of the designations used by manufacturers and suppliers to distinguish their
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products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book,
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and Open Object Press was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been
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printed in initial capitals.
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While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher
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and the authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages
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resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
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Published by Open Object Press, Grand Rosière, Belgium
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FAQ about documentation Licence
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===============================
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Why not use a free documentation licence ?
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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To achieve very high quality documentation, we are managing it as a standard
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publication process, with quality reviews by an editor. We also think that
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the documentation is worth being distributed in bookstores as printed editions
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on paper. It gives very good worldwide visibility for the product.
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When working with professional editors, like Eyrolles, they ask for
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copyrights on the (translated) content so that they can easily invest in
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mass printing and distribution of the book. To take this risk, they need
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protection on versions of the book that is not compatible with the GFPL.
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Do you accept contributions from everyone to modify the book ?
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Our goal is to accept most of the contributions and contributors. So we provide
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written authorisation if you contribute significantly.
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But we must keep control of the book content to ensure:
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* Editors' rights are not infringed
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* Incentives like paid authors/translators rights are not infringed
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The errata section is public on the wiki. Everyone can contribute in this
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section. Then an author can review modification proposals and apply them in
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Why is this a good approach ?
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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The documentation of OpenERP is one of our biggest priorities. We currently
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have the best documentation amongst all open source ERP systems but it's not
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enough and I am sure we can do much more better.
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**Writing Good Documentation is Complex**
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For years we have tried to develop community based documentation on a wiki where
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everyone contributes. With Open ERP we have a strong community but, after years,
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the community documentation still does not reach our expectations:
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* Deprecated compared to new versions of the software,
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* Original authors do not maintain what they write / contribute,
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* Appears like we assembled different pieces of unrelated documentation,
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* Sometimes contributions come from people that do not understand the software well enough,
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* Not end-user oriented,
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* Some have experience only in food industries, others services companies, others manufacturing, etc.
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As a result we decided to review the way we will write and maintain future
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documentation about Open ERP and Open Object.
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Most of the best open source documentation has been fully written in one try
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by only one or two people / authors. After that, the community improved the
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content with small improvements here and there.
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So I think we'd be better to focus our resources on some good individuals
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rather than a global community. But writing a complete document (or even a
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complete chapter) can take a long time (we took about 200 hours to write the
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Open ERP book in french, 280 pages). So we need incentives to motivate these
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contributors / authors.
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So, we decided to manage all documentation about Open ERP like any other
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book edition. We will set up an editing chain with the following actors:
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* The editors: will work with authors to review the quality of the book and will distribute in a range of countries through webshops and real bookstores. The editor also defines author contracts and the graphics, charts and style. He will manage the collections (set of books).
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* The authors: everyone can write his own chapter(s) and propose them to the editor. The editor will make a selection of chapters to publish complete books.
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* Re-Readers: will re-read books before publication and work with the editor to achieve a high level of quality.
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* Translators: will translate a particular book to their mother tongue based on the english version.
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Editors will be different according to the countries/translations of the book.
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For all French countries, we already contracted our preceding books with
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Eyrolles. For the English version, we will create our own company edition to
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keep the rights on the text so that we can publish it online for free.
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Now, we have our incentives for authors and translators:
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* Getting monthly revenue through author rights based on monthly sales,
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* Being published in bookstores with our worldwide distribution channel.
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Having established that, this should leverage individuals effort and promote
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contributions on writing good documentation. As people will be published and
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paid for their good work, this should promote new authors and translators.
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Books are sold in bookstores in different countries and languages, which allows
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us to remunerate the full edition chain through author rights. It will help us
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to motivate authors and translators to write more chapters, and improve
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We had to find a good middle point between selling through bookstores to
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remunerate authors and publishing online to provide a free version. So, most of
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our books (depending on the contract we have with the editor in the related
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country), will be published online some months after their official
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Our goal is to create many different books for different domains: technical
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books, marketing management, services companies management, openerp for
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Book writing will be our main documentation process. At each new version of
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OpenERP, we will release new versions of the different books. The editor will
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organise this and will get revenues for this.
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In addition to this, we use a community wiki for all others documentations that
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are not directly related to the software or for documentations that are "per
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module". For our main knowledge management system, we use Launchpad Answers,
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where you can ask questions or reply answers.
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**The Role of The Community**
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This documentation writing and maintaining process tends to emphasize
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individual efforts from authors and translators. This does not means we think
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the community is less important for writing documentations. The community
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remains very important for different reasons:
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* The community provides authors and translators because everyone can request to be an author for one or several chapters, no need to write a full book.
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* The editor needs readers that will review the book before his official release.
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* These readers will be chosen amongst the different contributors in the community.
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To improve the quality of books versions after versions, we will extensively
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work on errata in the wiki. Community will be able to propose improvement
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through the errata section.
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Allowing everyone to contribute in errata instead of directly in the content
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allows us to keep into control on the quality of our documentations.