The Libre Graphics Global Documentation project is an initiative to bring together people with expertise in the free graphics software community who want to work together to create free documentation materials and translate them. It is Intended as a hub in the network of documentation producers, programmers, designers and translators. For me the Free Software culture and sharing is just the natural way of doing things. Copying masters and learning from them has been a traditional way of learning for hundreds of years in Asia. We can look to the tradition of copying paintings for instance. Meeting a lot of newbie FOSS users and in particular designers I would also like to see more free documentation books, tutorials, videos and any other resources available to grow the community. In an openly maintained project, increasing the user community ultimately also means increasing the number of contributors. While closed copyright materials currently offer income to existing contributors, I would personally be happy to support authors to adapt a more open and freely licensed publishing. The Libre Graphics Global Documentation projects aims to work as a supportive network hub for existing free/libre software projects. Furthermore it is a playground to test and adapt tools from the ‘software world’ for documentation projects including using Git repositories for documentation projects and ‘task’ trackers. We also encourage the experimentation with different media, especially as different learner types appeal to different forms of interaction. A community blog that will be launched shortly will inform people about new activities and documentation related material. Activities planned are live book sprints, the making of tutorial videos and the translation of existing books. Materials will be released mainly on existing channels of projects or on dedicated sites like flossmanuals which will be linked from the Libre Graphics Global Documentation site. The project will work to acquire funding for documentation workshops. Books coming out of the project will be published with an official ISBN and will be released as printed books (if possible) taking advantage of lower printing costs in Asia. Continuing our work at events like FOSSASIA and the Open Design Weeks Asia we will feature documentation related workshop sessions and support projects with materials and space needed to have the best possible outcome.

1. Libre Graphics Global Documentation Project Hong Phuc Dang LGM 2011, Montreal

2. 1. We need More Free Documentation 2. The Libre Graphics Global Documentation Project 3. How we want to Support the Community 4. Ideas to Create Documentation Freely and Efficiently

3. Working with Libre Graphics software, organizing events and conducting trainings during the last year, I came to realize ...

4. We need More Free Documentation

5. We need More Free Documentation

6. We need More Free Documentation

7. Free as in Freedom

9. Some would like to buy materials, but there are not always available locally

10. A lot of freely licensed materials exist already, e.g.

11. Help content in forums

12. Tutorials at project sites and videos on the web

13. Some challenging issues may prevent people in the community to create and publish more materials and – to publish them under free licenses. Questions involved circle around “income”, “publishing contracts”, “copyright”, available time, recognition and personal interests.

14. Examples of existing documentation and educational projects in the FOSS, Free Content and Libre Graphics community

15. Wikibooks - the wiki for books. Difficult to know which ones are good. It seems like the wikibooks concept has not worked out entirely for (quality) books (yet).

16. Khan Academy - a site of a dedicated videomaker with over 2000 Creative Commons licensed videos, but in flash (closed source) and not downloadable. Videos can only be used non-commercially.

17. 'Wireless Networking in the Developing World' is a free book about building low-cost wireless network infrastructure. It was first put together during a one week book sprint of contributors from all over the world in London. It is regularly updated. The publication is supported by Canada's International Development Research Centre. wndw.net

18. Flossmanuals.net offers a number of manuals, e.g. the Vietnamese community just translated the OLPC Sugar manual. The wiki powered site focuses on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software. The documentation is licensed under the GPL.

19. Online forums exist on many project sites. Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Laidout - most of the Libre Graphics projects have tutorials available in pdf and videos on their website or on video sites.

20. Actually, there are many books available already, but unfortunately most of them are not under a free license. inkscape.org/books/ - wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Books - gimp.org/books/

21. Inspite of constraints (I assume from publishing houses) authors already began to share chapters online and make additional sources available. There's also a download file there containing all of the source code discussed in the book, some sample images in the GIMP's native format (XCF), plus a few other useful scripts which were used to generate some of the figures in the book. gimpbook.com

22. The famous Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is even more successful since his books are online as free downloads. “Paulo Coelho is a strong advocate of spreading his books through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. A fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online. Sales of his book jumped from 3,000 to one million in three years, with no additional promotion or publicity from his publishers.” (compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho)

24. Some of the best resources – books – are mostly unfree and therefore limit the use, sharing and possibility to remix.

25. Videos in the proprietary flash format are not downloadable.

27. Some of the best resources – books – are mostly unfree and therefore limit the use, sharing and possibility to remix.

28. Videos in the proprietary flash format are not downloadable. -> Let's collect more examples of good freely licensed materials. -> How did they do it?

29. Questions remaining

30. What free tools and technologies exist to make different media available freely? Documentation writers and videomakers are dispersed all over the world. How to get them together to achieve the best possible outcome for example in a book sprint? How to work on materials when contributors have only a limited amount of time? What can we learn from free software programmers? How can we set up an efficient documentation infrastructure and collaborate to create more excellent resources? What additional benefits can documentation writers and users have? How can the process of documentation be funded? How can authors generate an income?

31. The Libre Graphics Global Documentation Project

33. aims to support documentation contributors

34. brings together people with expertise in Libre Graphics applications

35. supports contributors to work together to create free documentation materials

37. Create

39. Easy to distribute

40. Easy to change

43. Easy to distribute

44. Easy to change

47. Easy to distribute

48. Easy to change

52. How we want to Support the Community

54. Using social networks to connect with people

55. Organizing live book sprints

56. Organizing translation sprints in Asia and elsewhere

57. Co-operating with projects on their existing channels

60. Acquiring funding for “document creation” events, sprints and publication

61. Publishing books online with an official ISBN

62. Creating audio books and Android book apps

63. Printing books by using low cost printing advantage in Asia

65. Tools, Guidelines, Working Models

66. Tools, Guidelines, Working Models (seven fun ideas to create resources freely and efficiently)

68. b) Use shared folders (It is relatively easy to set up a shared folder on a Linux server or we can use tools like Dropbox.

69. c) Explore new ways to collaborate, e.g. Git for designers (I am looking forward to the talk of OSP)

72. f) Learn from the programmers and set up “documentation sprints”, just like code sprints, that we see at events like the Ubuntu developer summit twice a year. We would like to organize a Libre Graphics book sprint just after FOSSASIA and would be happy to welcome you.

74. Hong Phuc Dang hp@fossasia.org fossasia.org // opendesign.asia Please get in touch with me, if you are interested to work together on documentation or if you have an idea for cooperation. I would be very happy to talk to projects and discuss how I could help. I hope to see you in Vietnam at FOSSASIA 2011 from Nov. 11-13 or at any other time. We always have a free table for contributors in our company office in the Mekong delta. LGM 2011, Montreal HP.Dang, M.Behling Libre Graphics Global Documentation Project

75. Hong Phuc Dang hp@fossasia.org FOSSASIA Nov. 11-13, Vietnam fossasia.org Thank you.