Of course it "should" be! Every child "should" have enough to eat and a good education too, but few people live in an environment where they'd have the cheek to demand it as if it's an inherent *right* - someone's got to develop the skills and put in the time and effort to earn the money to make it happen.
So of course every FOSS should have good docs - the question is written by whom? In most cases the answer is - by the user community. The developer's time is better spent actually working on the code. It would be great if the developer(s) could facilitate - set up a wiki, put good notes in the source code, be available to review for accuracy, answer the more technical questions etc. But on a small un-sponsored project, the developer has no "obligation" to anyone to do anything - he's been so incredibly generous to share the code he wrote to scratch his own itch, that the least the freeloading users can do is contribute back where they can. If a user wants to be able to be "demanding", then they should become a donor/sponsor/paid customer of the project's development. Any attitude of entitlement to free resources is not only selfish but unrealistic. All of this is just my opinion of course. . . On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayle...@eircom.net> wrote: > hans...@gmail.com wrote: > >> if a user takes the >> attitude that a program "should have" well-written documentation >> designed for non-technical users to understand, and any program that >> doesn't is somehow deficient in his eyes, then perhaps he would be >> better served as a paying customer of a company he then has the right >> to complain to. > > I completely disagree. > Any program offered to the public should be properly documented. > This has nothing to do with open source. > > -- > Timothy Murphy > e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net > tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 > s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > What You Don't Know About Data Connectivity CAN Hurt You > This paper provides an overview of data connectivity, details > its effect on application quality, and explores various alternative > solutions. http://p.sf.net/sfu/progress-d2d > _______________________________________________ > BackupPC-users mailing list > BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net > List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users > Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net > Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colocation vs. Managed Hosting A question and answer guide to determining the best fit for your organization - today and in the future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
