Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux
- From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako debian.org>
- Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 12:36:40 +0100
On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 10:20:04AM [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Benni Baermann wrote:
On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 10:03:21PM -0000, Niall Douglas wrote:
Some programmers, who regrettably appear to be concentrated within
certain parts of the free software movement, take the view that
computer programming should be returned to a medieval tradecraft
whereby the tradesperson holds all of their skill in memory and
experience and form guilds to maintain it not becoming public
knowledge. Needless to say, anything approaching reasonable
documentation is a distinct no-no.
It is however easy to read conspiracy into programmers skipping good
documentation. To be fair, it's far more likely that many programmers
are slightly autistic and thus writing English is much harder than
writing code. Nevertheless, I can see some being motivated by a
desire to return computing back to the "golden age" when it was
"pure" though of course, they'd never ever admit that.
Sorry, i dont get this. In my experience free software is the best
documented software available on this planet.
I tend to agree but I am biased since I write both FOSS software and
documentation. :) Personally, I've found that a key to the success of
a project is very good documentation for both users and
developers. Without this, users will not use it and developers will
not join either. When you combine with this higher level
documetanation like TLDP howtos and you quite a great documentation
infrastructure.
By the way: the original thread focuses on _licenses_ for
documentation and not about the quality of it. But maybe i got it
completely wrong, my english is not the best.
No. As far as my own messages were concerned, I was talking about
licenses although we seem to have hit on a sore point and gotten a
little bit off track. :)
Regards,
Mako
--
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/