Re: The future of this book

[Akim Demaille]

 Gary> Yeah.  I agree.  I feel somewhat to blame for not having ridden the
 Gary> project harder.  Then again the last 18 months have seen my life turn
 Gary> on its head a couple of times.  Happily (for me) but unfortunately (for
 Gary> the book, and my activity in the GNU projects I maintain) I am enjoying
 Gary> where I am at a lot right now in RL.

Hi Gary!

Pleased to hear from you :)  What does RL mean?


 >> This book needs a maintainer, as IMNSHO that's what lacked amongst us,
 >> and led to this disaster.

 Gary> O'Reilly could have done a better job with their editing and
 Gary> timely feedback. 

I have griefs against them, and I shall not hide them.  I respect
Andy, but he has been a terrible coach.  I expected my feedback, and
also something consistent with the feedback I had from other people,
who liked the material.

 Gary> But what's done is gone.  I agree.  This option is good.  I
 Gary> would like to continue to work on this though and potentially
 Gary> sell it to a publisher (under the GFDL) when it's done.  I
 Gary> think this is only possible if we (the authors) retain the
 Gary> copyright, but I'd be happy to hear RMS' and Arnold Robbins'
 Gary> view on the matter.

I think this is a nice direction.  Actually, I recently bought books
from RMS, they (physically) look great!  Maybe the FSF is the editor
we want?

 Gary> Realistically, I am not going to have much time until after my
 Gary> 2nd Dan grading in May, and after that perhaps two evenings per
 Gary> week.

I'm not going to have more time than I already had.
 

 Gary> I'm open to persuasion, but would prefer to own the copyright
 Gary> and retain the option to publish at a later date...

If I can be convinced this *will* happen, I'm OK.  I'm kind of
pessimistic, given the failure we experienced.  So I'm in favor of a
hard deadline: if we fail to prove we are able to manage this book in
the near future, let's face our impotency, and handle the baby to some
other guys (I have to make the same move with a2ps :).