[HacktionLab] Fwd: FLOSS Manuals is 20 Years old today! Let's celebrate.

Mon Jun 8 10:55:28 UTC 2026

Hi there,

That would be great if you could share.

I wonder if you would be interested in this project? I imagine you could 
be able to contribute something.

https://about.flossmanuals.org.uk/post/_hugo-manual-proposal/

thanks
Mick

On 05/06/2026 22:16, a.praetorius at serapath.de wrote:
> I followed the link and on 
> https://gitlab.com/flossmanuals/fm_en_splash/-/work_items/25 it seemed 
> this doesnt exist and is a goal?
> If that's so, I recently made a little repository (it's still on 
> github though), where a scientific paper style pdf is generated from 
> markdown and a website could be generated as well.
> If that's of interest, I can share it.
>
> On Mon, 1 Jun 2026 at 15:25, m3shrom <m3shrom at riseup.net> wrote:
>
>     Hi there,
>
>     This rather long post below by me is worth sharing if only for the
>     link to the original of this ole house (not Shakin' Stevens!)
>
>     But if you want to join for 1 month of discussion future of
>     community documentation (or at least flossmanuals) you can join here.
>     http://lists.flossmanuals.org.uk/listinfo.cgi/community-flossmanuals.org.uk
>
>     I would actually like to collaborative an mimimal update to
>     https://archive.flossmanuals.org.uk/tech-tools-for-activism/ -
>     perhaps we can table that for Nottingham?
>
>     And can I just say how fooking right we were about being farmed!
>     Can we get a T shirt?
>
>
>     nice one
>     Mick
>     -------- Forwarded Message --------
>     Subject: 	FLOSS Manuals is 20 Years old today! Let's celebrate.
>     Date: 	Mon, 1 Jun 2026 15:12:43 +0100
>     From: 	Mick Fuzz <mickfuzz23 at gmail.com> <mailto:mickfuzz23 at gmail.com>
>     To: 	community at lists.flossmanuals.org.uk
>
>
>
>     Hello friends, it's Mick here from Floss Manuals.
>
>     Floss Manuals is 20 years old today. We've chosen the 1st of June
>     as our celebration date because it's the first time the project
>     was captured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Although I
>     got in touch with Adam Hyde our founder and he said it was
>     actually Feb :)
>
>     Over the last few months, me, Martin Kean and Helen Varley
>     Jamieson have been working on improvements and updates to the
>     Floss Manuals community infrastructure. We'd like to use this
>     anniversary as the starting point for a month of community
>     activity to help reboot the network.
>
>     The process of writing my PhD using open documentation tools, I
>     think, could align with a new direction for Floss Manuals, which
>     is, to me, to take the plunge and move towards writing with static
>     websites and Git instead of a centrally managed, specialised
>     content management system as we have used before.
>
>     This move is also practical. For several years the French Floss
>     Manuals community generously took on the task of running Booktype
>     on behalf of the wider project, including the English-language
>     community, and I'd like to thank them for that work. They took the
>     decision to stop maintaining the platform in April 2024, which was
>     entirely understandable. Since then, the project has effectively
>     been on hold.
>
>     The overhead of running and maintaining systems such as Booki and
>     Booktype has become increasingly difficult to sustain after Floss
>     Manuals became a volunteer-run project. Moving towards static
>     websites and Git may offer a more sustainable path forward.
>
>     As part of this post I'm also including a link to a song called
>     /This Old House/. Some people in the UK will know it as a Shakin'
>     Stevens song, but I prefer the original version.
>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhLhF12TBE - check the lyrics,
>     it's a bit darker than Shakie's take.
>
>     Being involved with Floss Manuals has sometimes felt a bit like
>     looking after an old house. There have been things falling off it,
>     services shutting down, and periods where I haven't been able to
>     repair or add to things as quickly as they've broken. I've been a
>     bit of a caretaker. But it's a good old house, and it's a house
>     that's worth patching up.
>
>     Of course, there's another thing that's about to fall off the roof
>     of the house.
>
>     I recently received an email from our hosting provider to say that
>     they will no longer be supporting the Mailman mailing lists that
>     we've used throughout much of Floss Manuals' history. So, beyond
>     making sure that we preserve and archive what's there, one of the
>     jobs that needs doing is working out what comes next for community
>     communications.
>
>     This may actually be a good opportunity to start again and let
>     people choose what they want to subscribe to, whether that's a
>     low-traffic announcements list, a more active community discussion
>     list, or something else entirely.
>
>     I do already have an offer from someone who can provide a Mailman
>     list if we want to keep things old school, but I'm also open to
>     updating the technology if there's a better approach. Email me
>     directly if you have a suggestion or offer.
>
>     We've got another couple of months before this mailing list
>     reaches its end of life, and in some ways that's helpful. I feel
>     slightly hesitant about generating a lot of traffic in people's
>     inboxes if this reboot discussion becomes active, and that's
>     something we can look at together. At least we know that there is
>     an end date for activity on this list, and that gives us a reason
>     to decide what comes next.
>
>     Of course, if you'd rather not be part of those discussions, the
>     link to unsubscribe is at the bottom of every email.
>
>     In the coming weeks I'll write more about the huge number of
>     people who have contributed to Floss Manuals and the equally huge
>     body of work that has been created over the last twenty years. I
>     won't try to start listing people or projects now.
>
>     I'd also love it if other people could chip in with their own
>     memories, thanks, stories about what they learned, or tributes to
>     particular people who made a difference to them along the way.
>
>     I'd like to invite people to write blog posts for us, or simply
>     start thinking about what they might want to remember and share.
>     As part of this reboot process I've migrated our previous blogs to
>     a new Hugo-based website, which is now available at:
>     http://about.flossmanuals.net
>
>     It would be great to see that site become a place where we can
>     collect a bit more of the history, memories and lessons from
>     twenty years of Floss Manuals.
>
>     It would also be great to hear where people are now. Floss Manuals
>     has connected an rich diversity and quantity of people over the
>     years. I think many people would be interested to hear what you've
>     been doing since, whether there are things you learned through the
>     project that stayed with you, and whether you see any parallels
>     between the work you're doing now and the work we did together
>     through Floss Manuals.
>
>     On that note, I also want to share some personal good news.
>
>     Last Wednesday I successfully defended my PhD thesis in a viva
>     examination, which feels like a pretty important milestone for me.
>
>     Looking back, I can see a lot of connections between that work and
>     my involvement with Floss Manuals. Many of the ideas that shaped
>     the research, particularly around collaborative working, open
>     documentation, participation and sharing knowledge, were
>     influenced by things I've learned through being involved with this
>     community over the years.
>
>     The thesis is available online at pump.jammlabs.org.uk
>     <http://pump.jammlabs.org.uk>. I still need to make a few final
>     corrections, but it's now in a form that people can read. There's
>     also a particular blog post related to the research that I think
>     may be of interest to people here, which I'll share alongside it.
>
>
>               /A Future for non-linear FLOSS Manuals/
>
>         /While most manuals in FLOSS Manuals have been linear, there
>         have also been ones which were more complex in structure. For
>         example, some have been about process, exploration, and a kind
>         of pick-and-mix approach. A good example of this is Digital
>         Foundations, which moves between guided instruction and
>         open-ended experimentation rather than forcing a single path
>         through the material
>         From /https://pump.jammlabs.org.uk/blogs/meeting-middle/
>
>     I'd genuinely be interested to hear where other people have ended
>     up, what projects you're involved in these days, and whether Floss
>     Manuals played any part in shaping the path that got you there.
>
>     I'll also share some of the technical changes that have been made,
>     along with some of the new approaches to publishing that we're
>     experimenting with. I'll do that in a way that invites discussion,
>     because I don't think there's only one way forward and I'd be
>     interested to hear different views on how we should approach these
>     things.
>
>     So, given those teasers of different directions for discussion,
>     that's probably enough for this celebratory post.
>
>     Feel free to chip in with your thoughts and responses in any way
>     you want by hitting "reply all".
>
>     nice one
>     cya
>     Mick
>
>
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