On Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Klaas Freitag wrote:
I don't mind reading source code to document, but I plainly don't have the time to document openSUSE BuildService. I don't find lots of time to document my own stuff, so why should I do so for things others made?
If that's your mindset you should think again if free software projects are the right place for you to be.
Before you blame somebody not to support OpenSource check who you blame. If I enter your name in Google I find only one reference called Kooka. Check my name same way. I think more than 15 years of open source software programming should be enough to have my own opinion about what I do and what not!
Especially if these others are an commercial company. This opinion, again, is the reason for many problems we have in the project. It's poor.
This is a perfect valid opinion. Novell is a commercial company and everthing I do in the BuildService helps Novell direct or indirect. I also have positive effects from this, or I would not do what I do. But don't expect me to dedicate my soul to commercial interests, as this would be really poor. I'm old enough to seperate my private and commercial interests. The BuildService becomes a central part of the SUSE distribution and you expect me to write documentation for it?
But to write good user documentation about the BS it requires more than just having it in the source repo. Such a documentation needs professional editing, a good concept, ongoing proofreading etc. That is doable, but not from developers who work on the code. They (we) simply can not do that, not only because we're usually bad writer, but because we simply do not see where documentation is needed. As the developer of a part of the system, all seems so obvious that one thinks it is not neccessary to document it decently. As features sum up, things get messy.
How is that solvable? There have to be documentation editors who watch what the developers are doing. If features show up, they have to stand up and TALK to the developers and ask them questions. With that input they can write good documentation. Developers can proofread, comment etc.
You talk nonsense. What you talk about is a end-user documentation. Nobody asked for this. Required is a minimum documentation. Which keywords are supported in which places, which functions are supported, what effects do they have, where are the configurations and so on. This is plain task of any developer. Has always been. This plain documentation I'm required to make always for our own software as well. And I'm sure there are already parts of this, but it cannot be found which actually means it does not exist really.
Clearly Novell can dedicate a couple of resources to this task. This is currently not happening.
Yes, we see that. Ciao -- http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+help@opensuse.org