Want to help? Join the mailing list, open an issue, or choose a manual to adopt.
FLOSS Manuals (FM) is a community of volunteers making and maintaining manuals on Free Software and activity linked to Free Culture. While FLOSS Manuals is less active than in its early years, it remains a unique space on the web, a place for diverse, openly licensed, community-driven documentation that sits outside corporate platforms. See our See the front page of manuals. (please note our new URL https://flossmanuals.org.uk and update your links)
We continue to support a smaller number of active manuals, to signpost external manual that have superseded existing ones, and care for a large archive of past work which may server future projects.
At a time when the independent web and open practices are gaining renewed attention, now is a great moment to revisit and rebuild existing works. Existing manuals are there to be picked up, adapted, and brought back into circulation by new contributors.
How you can contribute to FLOSS manuals
- use or promote a manual within your communities
- join our mailing list to get updates and specific calls for help
- adopt a manual and invite others to help you update it
- create a new manual and invite others to help you bring it to life
The FM community mailing list
We still use a very “traditional” organising tool, the mailing list. To sign up follow enter your email at the following pages and follow the instructions you get emailed.
- Announcement list for news: https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/fm-announce
- Discussion list for collaboration: https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/fm-discuss
FM issue tracker
To reduce the amount of mail in our email inboxes the best way to report an issue with FM or to suggest a new manual, or let us know you want to adopt one is to use our issue tracker here.
https://gitlab.com/flossmanuals/fm_en_splash/-/work_items
How to adopt a manual
If you want to take on the maintenance or revival of an existing FLOSS Manuals manual, here is a simple route to get started.
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Start from what exists (often an EPUB)
Many manuals already exist as EPUB or PDF files. We can help you turn these back into a working, editable format and get something live again, just get in touch. -
Take a lead, but not alone
Adopting a manual usually needs someone to take a lead on moving it forward. That doesn’t mean doing everything yourself, it means helping coordinate updates, inviting contributions, and keeping things moving. -
Choose where it lives
You can host the manual yourself (for example on your own site or repository), or work with us to bring it back into the FLOSS Manuals ecosystem. Either route is fine, the important thing is that it’s accessible and maintained. -
Follow FLOSS Manuals principles
Keep the work open and reusable (copyleft), retain attribution, and make it easy for others to contribute. If you adapt or update a manual, be clear about what has changed. See here for more information on what makes a FLOSS Manual
The goal is to bring useful documentation back into circulation, even small updates or partial revivals can make a real difference.
If you have any questions and want to talk to a human, please do get in touch on getinvolved