A (currently theoretical) question concerning a book about the Kolab Server

[Jason Komar]

On July 10, 2008 05:33:33 am Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
> Hi!
>
> As some of you may know I recently wrote a book about the Linux
> distribution Gentoo
> (https://www.opensourcepress.de/index.php?26&tt_products=144).
>
> While I like Gentoo my main area of activity is the Kolab groupware
> and I'd be really interested in writing a handbook for administrators
> of the Kolab server.
>
> Ideally that book would be available in print but free in its
> electronic version as PDF. This is a model currently not supported by
> my publisher OpenSourcePress. They rely of course on the income made
> with the books in whatever format.
>
> So I could choose to tackle that project on my own. But that would
> have significant drawbacks. I'd probably only invest time when I have
> it which would mean it would be a project that takes ages. And I'd
> loose the very valuable influx of knowledge from the publisher.
>
> I know very well from the experience with the Gentoo book that their
> input has a very high value. What I was capable of writing and
> submitting into their subversion system miraculously turned into
> readable text with the next revision I checked out. And I think I'm
> not yet lost deep enough in code that I would underestimate the value
> a well readable technical documentation has.
>
> I do see parallels with the free software provided by the Kolab
> Konsortium. It is actually a quite amazing success that the consortium
> manages to publish a free groupware server that is commercially
> viable. Companies are willing to pay for feature enhancements such as
> the port of Kontact to Windows or the start of the SyncML support to
> name some recent ones. In my eyes it is a fantastic achievement by the
> companies driving the Kolab project that such things are automatically
> contributed back to the community.
>
> So I'm wondering if there'd actually be enough financial interest in a
> book about Kolab. This is still a completely hypothetical question as
> I didn't consider the important parameters of such a project yet. I'd
> expect the costs to be somewhere in the range of twenty to thirty
> thousand Euros for convinving the publisher to agree to the model with
> a non-free print version and a free PDF.
>
> So right now I'm just looking for some comments to start getting some
> ideas and a better grasp of the potential problems that one would need
> to solve.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Gunnar

I don't have a lot of funds available, but would be willing to contribute what 
I can. A book like this would make the use of the kolab server more 
attractive to business which in turn could help drive development in the 
future. The existence of a manual such as this would be a real asset to the 
kolab community.

-- 
Jason Komar
806706 Alberta Ltd.
O/A Stormfront Ventures
Email: jkomar at jbox.ca