Reasons for wanting to remove my documents

[Vladimir Vuksan <vuksan@cs.unm.edu>]

Since Guylhem posted my request to remove my documents on ldp-discuss
and got few e-mails asking me why I have decided to do it I have decided
to mail this to the whole list.

I maintain two mini-HOWTOs, Cable Modem mini-HOWTO and DHCP mini-HOWTO.
One of the main reasons for writing and updating these documents that
after getting a cable modem connection two years ago I spent countless
hours to get it running since the documentation available was
non-existant or insufficient. As a way of contributing to Linux and
saving some people time and nerves I decided to write those two
documents. They were consequently included as part of LDP. Initially
everything worked well, I would submit my document and it would appear
on the LDP web site within a week. Few months ago I started noticing
that my updates either wouldn't make it to the LDP or would be posted
with an extremely long delay. One of the updates during the summer took
about two months. On numerous occasions I sent e-mail to the Tim (the
howto maintainer) asking him what was the status of the update or
whether there were any problems with the document. I never received a
single response. Most of my documentation changes fairly often,
especially Cable Modem mini-HOWTO so having updates every two months is
simply not acceptable. 
For instance on one occasion I had a typo in a command which a number of
readers pointed out (e.g. /etc/dhcp.leases instead of /etc/dhcpd.leases)
which I fixed but took two months to actually make it to LDP (are we
Microsoft or what). I took the issue to the linux-doc mailing list and
discovered that there were a lot of people having the very same problem,
unresponsivness of the LDP team. This has made me really bitter.

Few weeks ago I read Matt Welsh's post on Slashdot and LinuxToday and
thought things have changed and that finally things were going for the
better. Unfortunately I was wrong. Things still get posted with a 2 week
delay and two of my updates disappeared. I have also learned that
metalab has offered to host a CVS server for LDP and had the server set
up but LDP leadership declined the offer, why I have no idea but that
doesn't bring me much comfort. Also I learned that  Open Source Writers
Group (http://www.thepuffingroup.com/oswg/) is planning on setting up a
site for open source documentation and so far they seem to be much more
responsive so 
I'll wait and give them a try. So in short I have decided that my sanity
has precedence over LDP :-). Actually as I am writing this I feel way
better.

Vladimir


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