[lojban] The CLL, Community Efforts, and An Apology From The Board

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

I am speaking officially on behalf of the LLG board in this email.

Since it's this mail that got the ball rolling again, I'll quote it
before my reply:

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 03:46:14PM +0200, Remo Dentato wrote:
> 2010/3/30 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Remo Dentato
> > <rdentato@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > BTW, I'm still waiting for an answer on wheter I could put the
> > > PDF of the revised copy of CLL on the wiki. It has been months
> > > now and I don't even know if the they met and deliberated on
> > > the matter.
> >
> > Who did you ask? I don't see any objections arising as long as
> > you label it correctly. In any case, if there is some objection,
> > the worse that could happen is that it gets removed, so just put
> > it there, that's what a wiki is for, you don't ask for
> > permission for everything.
>
> The PDF was a typeset version of the revised CLL that is available
> on jbotcan, with exactly the same invite to buy the printed
> version from LLG. I just converted from HTML to PDF.
> 
> I put the PDF on the wiki after having asked on the IRC channel
> but I had it removed in a matter of hours with the objection that
> I had to ask for permission first. I can't remember to whom
> exactly I wrote (I should have the email trail stored somewhere)
> and I got the answer that the topic would have been discussed and
> I would have had an official response from LLG. BTW, I also had
> John Cowan supporting my request after I had sent a copy of the
> PDF to him as the author.

(Remo and most of the people who worked on this new CLL version
(hereafter "the new CLL team") and I have already discussed what I'm
about to say, just FYI)

We are very, very sorry for how this played out.

We completely failed the community on this one.  I also take a lot
of personal responsibility[1], because as secretary, it is my job to
make sure that everybody understands what is officially LLG and what
isn't, and not only did I *way* over-react, but I did so without
being in anything even vaguely approaching full possession of the
facts of the matter.

We actually did basically decide back in October 2009 that the new
CLL team's version was fine and we should do something with it, and
then we dropped the ball.  Again, very sorry.

In the process of failing to deal with this appropriately, we gave
Remo, at least, the impression that the LLG does not support or want
community projects.  Nothing could possibly be farther from the
truth!  People's pet projects are the *lifeblood* of Lojban.  We
want more, not less.  Don't come to us for permission, just do neat
things!

(Well, if you're intending to do something that might look like The
Official Word on something Lojbanic, as this was, please *do* come
talk to us; we promise to try to be much more reasonable!  Please do
not let us be silent; keep bugging us.  We're very busy, and we are
not ignoring you on purpose!)

Back to the matter at hand.

The original idea was to let the new CLL team post their version,
clearly marked as "not officiall".  Instead, though, I've managed to
rope them in to doing a project I've wanted done for *years*:
converting the CLL into a decent source format that will generate
either linked HTML or a book, cleanly, from one source.

To that end, here's what's going to happen:

1.  I'm giving the team the official sources of the CLL.  They're
going to produce a set of diffs between that and what they've done.

2.  The BPFK is going to deliberate over said diffs, and hopefully
approve them.  It should just by typos and stuff anyways.

3.  The team is going to turn what they've got into DocBook format,
without changing any of the content/text.

4.  That docbook will become the new official CLL source.  It, and
the HTML generated from it, will be posted to lojban.org, free for
anyone to download and use as they see fit.

This represents a complete reversal of our previous stance against
releasing the official source; the community is big enough and
robust enough that the time for us to be worried about people
ripping us off by, I dunno, schisiming and publishing the CLL for
their own profit, or something?, is long past.  We are one
community, and no-one's going to stop buying CLLs from the LLG just
because the official source is available.  In the incredibly
unlikely event that it *does* make a real difference to our cash
flow, we'll talk to the community about that, but I'm not actually
worried.

My sincerest thanks to the new CLL team for what they've already
done, and for taking on the further work I've asked of them.

They would, however, appreciate it if other people volunteered to
help; it's not an easy or small task.  Contact me or Remo if you're
interested.

-Robin

[1]: Some personal notes/perspective; feel free to skip, since it
got both longer and whinier than I intended:

  I've been bitching for *years* about how no-one aronud here does
  anything, and the new CLL team comes along and does a bunch of
  stuff (that I'd been meaning to do myself some day!), and instead
  of happily welcoming them and trying to get them to do a bunch
  *more* work :), I shut them down.

  And then, to top it all off, the board discussed it privately,
  mostly agreed that we were OK with it... and then completely
  forgot to actually *do* anything.

  I'm quite angry at myself over this, and I really can't apologize
  enough.  This is exactly the sort of thing that caused me to
  become a board member in the first place, and I hate that I became
  (hopefully briefly) the very thing I was once fighting against.

  My excuse is that I really *have* been personally overwhelmed, and
  simply haven't had the time to give Lojban decent attention.  I
  will try to do better, and to find more people to help me.

-- 
They say:  "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm  thinking:  "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other  than  the default  outcome?"  See http://shrunklink.com/cdiz
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/

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