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Message-ID: <3D0DFD58.3030207@anyware-tech.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 17:16:40 +0200
From: Sylvain Wallez <sylvain.wallez@anyware-tech.com>
Organization: Anyware Technologies
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To: cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: [doc] wikiland issue
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Diana Shannon wrote:

> I just read on cocoon-users about wikiland for a Cocoon dictionary. 
> You can see it for yourself at:
>   http://www.anyware-tech.com/wikiland/
>
> My question: who owns the result (content) of this particular wikiland 
> input? Does it belong to anyware-tech (Sylvain's company)? To Olivier? 
> There is absolutely no copyright information. Can anyone simply take 
> the results and publish them?


Here are some common clarifications, from both Olivier and me. We both 
work for the same company, but Olivier is currently working a one our 
customer's site, hence his "@airbus.com" mail address.

The software behind wikiliand is Apache/Apache-style license, being 
composed of Cocoon and Chaperon. The content is governed by a simple 
rule : anyone can read, anyone can write !

Let's start with the history of Wikiland : this is a personal experiment 
from Olivier about writing a wiki with Cocoon. Then Olivier wanted 
people to come to Wikiland to test it and help its development, and 
found that a Cocoon dictionary (or glossary ?) would be good a good 
subject as, by filling a need in the documentation, it would certainly 
attract many people interested in Cocoon, thus being able not only to 
write content, but also to help in the development of the software.

Wikiland is hosted at Anyware Technologies, since we have the required 
resources, and Olivier couldn't find a free hosting service for a Cocoon 
app. But, all this being an experiment, Anyware Technologies makes to 
warranty of any kind about anything regarding Wikiland (IANAL, but hope 
this makes things clear).

> My greatest hope is that the Cocoon project can harvest some of the 
> results, edit them, and update existing docs. For example, I have been 
> editing FAQs and have already refined a number of definitions which 
> would help Wikiland get started. These could be contributed right away.


Preliminary note : Wikiland should not be considered neither stable nor 
featurefull since there are some bugs, and some basic wiki functions are 
missing such as writer authentication and revision management. This 
means that anything written in this wiki can be deleted by anybody 
without notice and with no mean to get the content back ! Also, the 
wikiland document base isn't backup'ed (we can however perform backups 
if its success requires it).

Now this is with great pleasure that we could accept your contributions 
(in fact, we don't even have to accept any contribution as no 
authorization is required), but, as explained above, the current status 
of Wikiland may not be adequate as the reference system for Cocoon docs. 
But the more people use will it, the quicker Wikiland will evolve.

> I think most doc efforts do better with *some* existing content. In 
> other words, it's easier for people to edit an existing work than to 
> start from a blank page. For example, look at how many patches have 
> been contributed to the XMLForm Wizard How-To. Not any new How-Tos, 
> but a lot of patches/comments.


We agree that wiki, even if really easy once we know its syntax, can be 
hard to learn for a newbie. This is especially true for Wikiland which, 
as said previously is for now just an experiment, has some bugs and no docs.

> Will Cocoon be able to use the results of this Wiki in its own docs? I 
> sincerely hope we can. If so, I look forward to contributing to your 
> Wikiland. If not, I'm afraid we may eventually have competing Wikis, 
> which would be a real shame -- for users especially.


Once again, the purpose of Wikiland is to experiment a wiki with Cocoon. 
There is *absolutely no intention* from us to build a separate Cocoon 
document base, and we will be more than happy for its content to find 
it's way in Cocoon. Wikiland should be considered as a scratchpad for 
some Cocoon docs (the glossary).

One of our hopes is that we can one day edit Cocoon (or any 
Forrest-enabled project) docs directly on the web. Wikiland is a first 
experiment in that direction, but remember that wiki is an "anarchic" 
documentation system, even if Wikiland tries to organize this anarchy by 
allowing topics to be organized hierarchically.

> Can someone *please* clarify this issue? Sylvain? Olivier?


So as you can see, there are no ownership issues, and to make this 
clear, we will explicitely add a mention about the whole content as 
being governed by the Apache licence. Also, exporting Wikiland docs to 
xdoc won't be hard as the wiki text files are converted to XML using 
Chaperon for processing.

To stop any flame war about Wikiland, I suggest that we all consider it 
as what it is : an ongoing development to build a wiki system with 
Cocoon, the dictionary being the pretext to use, test and develop this 
wiki. It's content will be available without restriction, but without 
warranty.

If this still causes some issues, just let us know.

Sylvain & Olivier


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