Floss manuals
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| FLOSS Manuals | |
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| Type: | NGO and Non-profit Foundation |
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| Location: | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Key people: | Adam Hyde |
| Fields: | Software Freedom |
| Website: | http://www.flossmanuals.net |
The FLOSS Manuals (FM) is a non-profit foundation founded in 2006. The foundation is focused on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software.
The site is a wiki (TWiki) focused on the collaborative authoring of manuals. The documentation is licensed under GPL. Although initially the manuals were covered by the FDL, the community unanimously voted to change following a discussion about the limited and non-free nature of the unfortunately named 'Free Documentation license'.
Anyone can contribute to the material at FLOSS Manuals. Each manual has a maintainer – very much like the Debian maintainer system. The maintainer keeps an overview of the manual and discuss with those interested the structure etc. The maintainer is also responsible for gathering new contributors together. All edits are not 'live' – the edits are published to the manual when ready. This is to ensure the quality of the manuals is as high and as reliable as possible and that no new user encounters 'half finished' content.
Manuals are available as HTML online, or indexed PDF.
Additionally manuals can be remixed so anyone can create their own manual and export to indexed PDF, HTML (zip/tar) or a 'ajax' include.
FLOSS Manuals is determined to play a role in encouraging as many new users as possible to use free software. The foundation is young but supported by a talented group of contributors.
