Launching an Open Source Book Project
Published on 21 Feb 2017 · Filed in Information · 311 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)In my list of planned 2017 projects, I mentioned that one thing I’d like to do this year is launch an open source book project. Well, I’m excited to announce The Open vSwitch Cookbook, an Apache 2.0-licensed book project aimed at providing “how to” recipes for Open vSwitch (OVS).
Portions of the book are already available, with more content being added soon (more on that in a moment).
I’m using GitBook as the publishing platform; this allows me to write in Markdown and publish to a variety of formats. I’ll only be publishing to HTML at first; other formats may come down the road. I chose GitBook for a few reasons:
- It’s free for open source projects. This book, as well as the software that is its focus, are both open source projects.
- As I mentioned already, I can use Markdown for all the content.
- It allows me to store the book in a Git repository and use standard Git workflows.
I decided against using GitBook to host the Git repository for the book. Instead, the book’s source is found on GitHub. This enables collaboration on the book’s content—an aspect of this project that I think is much more important and far-reaching. You see, I don’t want this book to be a solo effort; I encourage anyone and everyone who has worked with OVS to feel free to pitch in. How can you help?
- You can create issues for the book (new recipes you’d like to see, inaccuracies or errors in existing recipes, suggestions for improving the organization or content)
- You can submit your own content or corrections via GitHub pull requests
- You can help spread the word about the cookbook, so that it reaches more OVS users
Stay tuned for more updates as this project progresses.
UPDATE 28 March 2017: I’m canceling this project. See this post for more details.