On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Lori wrote:
>
>
>
> maybe in addition to this legion of kernel hackers and the like there
> should be an associated legion of doc writers? so that you don't get
> engineers writing intelligible documentation, free them up for more kernel
> hacking - or is that what the linux documentation project is supposed to
> do?
>
> just stirring the flames...
>
I totally agree with you. Here is the problem, though. Hackers write code
because it is fun. Nobody would be slaving over a hot terminal wondering
whether to use SIGTERM or SIGQUIT for free if they didn't enjoy doing it.
Writing documentation, on the other hand, is not fun, at least not for
most people, so it is harder to find people who will commit a couple of
hundred (or more) hours of free time to a documentation project.
On the other hand, my experience has been that the free documentation
which comes with linux is an order of magnitude better than that which
comes with Solaris (at least - so far I've found Answerbook to be 100%
useless), for example, so I guess that corporations are even more
reluctant to PAY someone to write documentation than the average joe
schmoe is to write it for free.
