Re: howto get paid for writing a howto

[Poet/Joshua Drake <jd@linuxports.com>]

>If one agrees to pay someone in advance for writing something, how
>does one insure that the quality will be good?

A simple performance contract solves this problem. I have a copy that I
can send people if they are interested. It is is the that learnlots used
to send out.

>Wouldn't it be better to give awards for the best documents?

This is a neat idea but the idea of a document getting sponsored is better
IMHO. That way a person can get continual funding to keep the document up
to date. Of course, there are ways to do this with awards as well.

>In this case the documents that get awards should not be biased in favor
> of any one commercial
>distribution (such as RedHat) and should not cover only one brand of
>hardware or be primarily about commercial (non-free) software.

I don't agree with this. We should be striving to have much more
distribution specific information. We obviously can not cover ALL
distributions but we can definately cover the medum players and the
documentation the big players don't offer.

>Such documents may have a strong commercial bias 

We are talking about technical manuals not marketing literature. Set up a
review process. As long as the document contains the technical merits that
warrant an award. Give the award. Of course, then we get in to the
argument of guidelines for technical merit.

If money is going to provided then there must be a review process.

J

not in keeping with the
>ideals of LDP and may not merit the limited amount of awards
>available.
>
>			David Lawyer
>
>
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