> -----Original Message----- > From: Ali M. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 3:42 AM > To: The elegant MVC web framework > Subject: Re: [Catalyst] So, what do we want in the -next- book? > > I just want to suggest, since soon Catalyst will move to a new wiki, > why not celebrate the opportunity, by improving the documentation. > > I was personally always ... mmm... not sure how to describe this .... > always surprised/annoyed ... that beside the documentation we always > needed a book! > > For commercial software I always thought of its as a conspiracy with > the book publishers to make us buy books, specially since many > software companies are also book publisher (MS Press), and you can add > to this the scheme of certification and courses and things like oracle > university kinda like extortion. > > I was kinda saddened to see that this was kinda true for Perl, the > Perl documentation large parts of it are from the Perl Programming > book by Larry Wall and others, and the documentation also in many > place suggest that you need the book for more details. Okay the Perl > documentation is huge and I probably don't need more detail, plus the > book also reference the manual, so in a way, they were built to > complement each other .... anyway its strongly suggested you need the > book! > > The web, blogs, wikis are a great way to publish knowledge, we really > dont need more books, we more knowledge, more documented knowledge, > more documentation. > > Books are just a way to make money, money makers, that is exploting > the weakness in the online documentation.
I have seen this in some realms or projects, but very, very rarely in the FOSS community. Actually, I think it's the opposite in most cases - good, even amazing, online docs are created and maintained simply to make the software more popular, which may ultimately lead to a commercial license and/or support program that supports the developers. Example: ExtJS. Besides, it takes a lot of work to code, document and maintain even an internal application, much less one you are releasing to the world. If you take the time to write a book or even PDF doc and some folks are willing to pay for it to know your software better, I don't see anything wrong with that. > So please, don't be an extortionist, don't make a book ... write a > wiki page in the new wiki! > All we really need are more pages on wiki not a book! If you think you're being extorted by the purchase of a book then, by all means, please don't buy it. As for me, I'm not a big-time hacker that is a core dev on a very popular FOSS web framework, so buying a book is a simple way that I can support the author's FOSS intentions and real-world need to feed him/herself and his/her family. > But if you insist on writing a book, make a free online version, if How about free with the purchase of the book. v/r -matt pitts _______________________________________________ List: [email protected] Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
