Attention all DocBook fans!SourceForge is accepting nominations for its annual Community Choice Awards, so this is a great opportunity to Vote DocBook!
Nominations are open until May 29th. Please vote for DocBook in the Best Project for the Enterprise category. If you want to do the same, click here!
Get the word out using your social network and vote!
A few weeks ago, I found an interesting article on gauging the success of Open Source projects. Since I contribute to several open source and standards initiatives, I thought I'd put the article to the test with the most prominent of these: DocBook.
To give a little history, DocBook has been around since 1991. It is a very robust content model and considered the "de facto" standard for technical documentation. Given it's broad adoption, does that necessarily mean it is successful? Why? The article provides a 9-point checklist, so I'll address each of these in turn.
A thriving community - DocBook has one of the most active user communities around. Don't believe me? Check out the docbook-apps mailing list and the docbook mailing list and by tuning into the DocBook irc channel. You can get expert help from around the world almost 24-7 and in multiple languages, too! Many of these are contributors to the DocBook project on sourceforge.net, and participation is welcomed and encouraged.
Disruptive goals - Many would agree that DocBook provides much more control and semantics to what is currently available in Microsoft Word or other commercial documentation solutions. DocBook aims to be the preeminent solution for creating books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
A benevolent dictator - Two words: Norm Walsh. Norm is very well known in the XML community. He is not afraid to speak his mind concerning requested features, but is very open to new ideas and contributions.
Transparency - DocBook is maintained by a technical committee at OASIS. All activities and correspondence is archived and available for public review and input. The DocBook mailing lists are also archived by several different services. You can't get much more transparent than that.
Civility - This has never been an issue in the DocBook community. All participants are very professional, and willing to help the newbies as well as experts with any DocBook-related issues.
Documentation - Not only is the DocBook specification publicly available, but Norm Walsh has open-sourced his book, "DocBook: The Definitive Guide" and Bob Stayton has open-sourced his book, "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide". These are the best sources of documentation available for DocBook, but several parameter references as well as the DocBook wiki are also publicly available.
Employed developers - While DocBook does not have any official paid developers, several of the contributors work full-time on DocBook and DocBook implementations.
A clear license - The standard is freely available from OASIS as well as the docbook.org site. The specifications are covered under OASIS IPR Policy, where you can read all of the details.
Commercial support - Last, but not least, DocBook is supported in many commercial products.
In consideration of these 9 items in the checklist, I would posit that DocBook is, indeed, a very successful open-source project and well worth considering for your documentation.
I'd also like to point out to the naysayers that DocBook is NOT dead! In fact, it is more active than ever! The latest version of the standard (v5.0) has been in development for the last several years and is expected to reach official OASIS standard status some time this year. The DocBook TC is also establishing subcommittees to address industry-specific needs.
The first of these is the DocBook Publishers subcommittee, which is addressing the needs of the publishing industry (as opposed to computer hardware and software documentation industry). The specification for an official Publishers schema was recently approved and will be available for public review shortly.
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I saw the premiere of Star Trek last night. In short, absolutely stunning - especially in IMAX format! The special effects, sound effects, and soundtrack were awe-inducing.
Fellow Trekker Bill Petro has an excellent review here.
SPOILER ALERT:
There were quite a few nods to the original series and the movies that I loved, including the creature from Ceti Alpha (ST:II), the Orion girl, Captain Pike, the Phase Cannons (loose tie to Enterprise), Sulu's swordfighting...
I was hoping there would be a little tie-in with the Star Trek: Enterprise show (perhaps having Archer or Trip mentioned), especially since it was a prequel too. Perhaps the explanation of the altered timeline negates that whole series... I REALLY liked the use of Captain Pike in this film, so I'm OK with this approach. It might also have been fun to have Number One or Dr. Boyce in there (can't remember if the latter was killed in the attack...).
Complaints? Only a few: The Uhura relationship. It just didn't feel right to me. Also, since they got a Russian for Chekov, I was hoping they'd also get an actual Scot for Scotty. The englishman they got was OK, but still not quite what I'd hoped.
Bones almost stole the show. He was hilarious and absolutely in character. Spock and Kirk were also very well played.
In all, a very welcome re-start to the franchise. One I hope will continue to boldly go...
