That said, I really appreciate that you care enough to write your post and to let me know about it. I started a discussion on the appropriate list (fedora-docs-list) about reconsidering our licensing, and several good points have arisen.

I cannot be sure what is going to happen from here, but one thing is fully clear. It is the Fedora Project’s decision how to proceed, not an invisible puppet master. There are sound and legitimate reasons things are the way they are, just as there are sound and legitimate reasons to change them.

And maybe that time to change is now?

Many contributors dissasociated from this licensing scheme and additional CLA. Actually I think very smart person would dissasociate. Many others asccept it, because they just want to contribute to the wiki and do not think wabout the impact.

Forbidden content is inter-woven with content that is generally fine.
Content that does not follow best Fedora methods mixed with content that is a fine Fedora way to do things.

However, much of the first item content is not illegal/forbidden everywhere, just in the US and a few other draconian nations. Some of the method transgressions in the second item are just because of having to go to e.g. RPMFusion for software.
As you say, this is a reasonable question to ask. I think there are some potential solutions:

Pull all the permitted content in to the Fedora wiki
Within a relevant section, such as Multimedia, have a generic call, “For details on installing other software solutions, try these reference sites,” then link to the Fedora FAQ, rpmfusion.org, etc.
Work with those content providers to migrate their content creation and maintenance to Fedora proper, so they can off-load some or all of the work. Then they can focus on just the content that matters to them that cannot be within Fedora. This is akin to how RPMFusion works; they provide add-on packages to the Fedora base, and do not strive to replicate all of Fedora. The same should happen with their content; share the burden with the wider Fedora community on fedoraproject.org, and carry the lighter burden for the bits that cannot be in Fedora.

I know most of the people at those sites now, with the exception of Fedora Forum, and forging this level of relationship is the kind of activity I really should be focused on, IMO.

What howto functionality do people end up documenting first in their blog or in a forum or whatever..which makes their documentation a popular reference initially and encourages them to keep writing externally? I think for a lot of people writing external documentation in the howto area…its 3rd party software.

Are people allowed to write up documentation as part of Fedora using the documentation toolchain covering howto guides for things like mp3, dvd playback, nvidia driver installation or things like adobe flash or skype application installations?

It’s a serious question. If we can’t give people a platform to write about making use of these popular 3rd party software people will grow their on communication channels to talk about them, and then will continue to use those communication channels to document even more things.

-jef