What if Librivox dies?

LeonMire · Post by **LeonMire** » April 27th, 2007, 3:40 pm

I shudder at the thought, but the article in Reason magazine made me pause. It said at one point that if a few of the main contributors (i.e. the Admin team) get burnt out on free audiobooks, Librivox might fall apart. So I'm wondering.. is there any plan for "apostolic succession" in case that happens? Does Librivox, in other words, have a long-term future? We wouldn't it to be like the reign of Alexander the Great, would we? If for some reason, nobody steps up to take over the adminstrative duties, either because of time or the cost of maintaining all that web space, is there any guarantee that all those thousands of hours of work will stay up on the Internet for downloading?

TBOL3 · Post by **TBOL3** » April 27th, 2007, 3:51 pm

These audiobooks will be on the Internet until The Internet Archive dies. Because they host the files. Now about admins leaving, this may damper the project. But I am fairly certain that there are plenty of people that would take the job. After, the idea is to create a sort of leader hierarchy.
Browse
And even if this project does die, some person will see the LibriVox books from The Internet Archive, and revive the project.

Post by **hugh** » April 27th, 2007, 4:13 pm

we have a pretty distributed management system. while some of the people named in the article are pretty important, there are many other standard bearers to keep the project going. we also have very detailed "how-to" documentation, both public (on the wiki) and private, for more password-sensitive stuff, such as cataloging etc.

actually... makes me think, we should strip out the passwords and make that "how to make a librivox book" available to the public - if for no other reason than to let people know how darned complicated the back end management is.

the important thing is to keep the admin squad healthy and active ... so we are constantly adding new faces to the crew. but for every kara and hugh, there is a kri and ductapeguy and thistlechick and librarylady, and a.r.dobbs and gesine and caet and ceastman and cori and earthcalling and ezwa and gesine and gypsygirl and jimmowatt and kristin and Peter Why and raynr and Starlite and Stephan and tis, plus a number of others who have come and gone and who would likely come back to chip in if librivox ever got in trouble (sorry if i missed anyone!).

not to mention all the other keeners out here ... and the process itself is well-defined, and robust, and the project "management" itself very much distributed.

as cori said somewhere or other, the project is too well-built to suffer much with the departure of one or two or three or four key figures. 10 would be difficult, but that's pretty unlikely.

thistlechick · Post by **thistlechick** » April 27th, 2007, 4:21 pm

Is there a link to the article? how did I miss it? *curious*

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » April 27th, 2007, 4:26 pm

thistlechick wrote:Is there a link to the article? how did I miss it? *curious*

Over here Betsie:

http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8057

<hugs>

thistlechick · Post by **thistlechick** » April 27th, 2007, 4:37 pm

Thank you

kri · Post by **kri** » April 27th, 2007, 6:10 pm

I wouldn't worry about it too much

If I have anything to do with it, LibriVox will be around for a long long time. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the other people Hugh mentioned would say the same thing. That isn't to mention the incredibly devoted volunteers who aren't in positions of management but contribute a lot to the project (and feel just as passionate).

TBOL3 · Post by **TBOL3** » April 27th, 2007, 7:53 pm

Yes, if worst comes to worst, then I can be an admen...

Although, that would be a sad day, when I (who cares more about the philosophy behind LibriVox, rather then LibriVox itself) takes charge.

Let's see... Kri, I wan't five solo books done by next week, or your fired...

:o

Shurtagal · Post by **Shurtagal** » April 27th, 2007, 8:32 pm

I don't think we've much to worry about, even if - heaven forbid - all of the admins left we would still keep it going, if not as strong. thats the beauty of having everything on free spaces, (LV is from what I hear hosted freely, the sound files are hosted freely on archive.org, &c.)

TBOL3 · Post by **TBOL3** » April 27th, 2007, 8:37 pm

The one thing that i don't get, is if LibriVox is based on no money, how can we have a domain. Doesn't it cost $9 a year to have one?Editors?

Post by **hugh** » April 28th, 2007, 5:17 am

right. we have a budget of $9 a year or so, which i've been covering so far.

Robert Marquardt · Post by **Robert Marquardt** » April 28th, 2007, 5:27 am

This is a problem all open source/volunteer projects have to face. From what i see LibriVox is long past the point where important members leaving will bring it down.
I am member of Project Jedi which is an Open Source group for the Delphi programmnig language. The subprojects have changed hands several times now and are still alive. Seven years and seven new versions of Delphi.

LeonMire · Post by **LeonMire** » April 28th, 2007, 7:12 am

Whew! I feel much reassured now. I'm glad it's been given a good deal of thought.

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » April 28th, 2007, 9:45 am

hugh wrote: actually... makes me think, we should strip out the passwords and make that "how to make a librivox book" available to the public - if for no other reason than to let people know how darned complicated the back end management is.

Interesting suggestion... Interesting implications...

kayray · Post by **kayray** » April 28th, 2007, 9:53 am

<neil young>hey hey, my my... librivox can never die...</neil young>

Also: I did strip out the passwords some time ago. There are a few password-protected links but I think it's safe to make this public. Feel free to remove this link, anyone, if you feel it's not public-safe :)

http://librivox.org/metadata-coordination-101/

This is not necessarily entirely comprehensive or perfectly up-to-date, but it's close.