Re: Announcing - document collection project

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Timothy D. Witham wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 12:08 -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> 
>>On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 09:01:30AM -0800, Timothy D. Witham wrote:
>>
>> >    In an email conversation with Alan Cox and Andrew Morton I was
>> > asked if OSDL could create a repository for old non-NDA manuals.
>> > 
>> >    I agreed that this sort of old copyrighted but never to be reprinted
>> > documentation needs a home and even thought some said it was
>> > a monster it looked like a nice little bunny to me so .....
>>
>>Thanks, this has the makings of something really useful.
>>
>>One comment.  Links to external documentation (like the AGP
>>reference for eg) has the potential to 'disappear', making
>>this resource no better than a collection of bookmarks.
>>
>>A true repository would have the actual documents, though
>>I understand this may mean talking with the copyright holder(s).
>>
> 
>     I'm OK with that - it would of course depend upon the
> license from the copyright holder.  But I'm open.

I agree this document repository has significant potential, but I also 
agree with Dave:  from my own direct experience, documents DO disappear.

The ALSA project routinely asks vendors if the hardware manual can be 
mirrored on their FTP site, and I have been doing the same for network 
and ATA drivers:

	http://gkernel.sourceforge.net/specs/

Though I cannot say that all the people who gave me permission to mirror 
the site are still around, to give permission to push these specs to ODSL.

	Jeff