Free Documentation Base - Docs.eu.org Online

YannH writes "Docs.eu.org is a free documentation portal, trying to gather and to distribute computer science free documentation; we try to stay as open as possible on documentations we include. We gathered an amount of 500 Mo of documentation (linux, programming languages, free software philosophy, and so), some of them are standards that you can find everywhere, some other are more rarely referenced; hope this help. Enjoy :)"

Was this inspired by...

[Sunlighter]

...the idea for Programmer How Tos [c2.com]?

CS Free

[termos]

[...] to gather and to distribute computer science free documentation.
Finally some documentation that is free of computer science!

Re:CS Free

[greenhide]

Actually, a CS professor I had in college wrote an interesting essay defining computer science [slc.edu]. I think it was quite good, actually.

Re:silly frenchmen

[ion_]

I think o (octet) [ic.ac.uk] is more useful than B (byte) [ic.ac.uk]. It won't be mixed up with b (bit) [ic.ac.uk] as easily, and it's always equal to 8 bits.

Bits in a byte

[yerricde]

Can you give an example of a byte being something other than 8 bits?

In the upper physical layer of many serial communications protocols, a byte is 10 bits (2 framing and 8 data). But because that's still 8-bit bytes in a sense, here are more examples: 9-bit bytes [google.com] 6-bit bytes [google.com]

Re:silly frenchmen

[Guy Harris]

Can you give an example of a byte being something other than 8 bits?

Yes [inwap.com]. How big do you want your bytes to be (in the range 1 <= number_of_bits <= 36)?

On 99 44/100% or more of current computers, a byte is 8 bits, but that hasn't always been the case.

So, the time-tested question...

[Tuxinatorium]

Are you doing this to make the stuff:
1.) Free as in beer 2.) Free as in speech 3.) Free as in nude beach 4.) Free as in Iraqis 5.) Free as in the Ubermensch 6.) Free as in yesterday's trash 7.) Free as in Cowboyneal's appreciation ???

I hope they bring math too

[Hemi Rodner]

Right now they don't have all the math there. All that heavy calculus, discreet and differential subject that I'll have to start studying next year...

Project Gnutemberg

[d-Orb]

Well, the topic says it all :D. The Gnutemberg Free Documentation Database [gfdd.org] has links to a large(ish) number of documents written using Free (FDL and the like) licenses.

The big plus of GFDD [gfdd.org] is that not only can you find programming manuals and so on, but also a number of course notes, such as "A Radically Modern Approach to Introductory Physics" [gfdd.org].

I'm already bored...

[joto]

I see nothing here I couldn't easily find on google if I wanted to. Why would I want to go to your website to find (a possibly obsolote) version of the MySQL manual when I could go to mysql.com and get the new one? Why do we need yet another web-mirror of information that is already available everywhere?

Re:I'm already bored...

[YannH]

You take the exemple of Mysql, of course, it is easy to find on Google. But there are lots of good tutorials/books that are badly referenced, or not referenced at all. You start from "everything can be found on google". I don't think so...
The only websites that did what we are trying to do are the old sunsites, but most of them are today outdated.

Re:I'm already bored...

[carxwol]

As you can read "some of them are standards that you can find everywhere, some other are more rarely referenced". I'm ok that only rare links should be better but this is the choice of docs.eu.org :)