Hello everyone,

For the past few months I've been playing around with (read:
customizing) two machines I've got here, one being an Asus WL500gP
running FreeWRT and the other Linksys running OpenWRT. I also spent
quite some time nosing around the IRC channels, Forums, Wikis and
homepages. From this period I've noticed a few things. A minor warning:
Potential flame bait ahead. My intention is not to express any opinion
about anything being better than anything else; I would merely like to
pose a sugestion.

I've used both build systems and from this I feel FreeWRT to be ahead of
OpenWRT as far as tehnology is concerned. It definitely is more flexible
in it's build system, has more packages, and generally feels more
proffessional. Whether this is actually true doesn't really matter for
now. What I feel does matter is that there is a severe lack of proper
documentation for FreeWRT, which sometimes makes it a right
pain-in-the-bottom to configure / modify. It is in this aspect that I
feel OpenWRT to be quite strong, which inherently makes it more
accessible to users and developpers alike.

Now, what would be nice if we could get FreeWRT to get a similar level
of accessibilty for both developpers and "mere mortal users". The way
that OpenWRT seems to achieve this is through the use of a publicly
accessible Wiki (MoinMoin in their case). Their documentation system
isn't perfect, but at least they've got quite a large part of their
system documented. Such a system has at least two positive consequences.
(1) Developpers can be assisted in their documentation by users, or even
relieved of documenting at all in some cases. Developpers generally hate
documenting, so this seems like a desirable situation. (2) The other
consequence of better documentation is that it will most likely  make
FreeWRT more accesible and thus attract more developpers and / or users
to the FreeWRT community, who in their turn again might contribute to
the community.

Ofcourse mainatining a Wiki requires some resources like time and
bandwith, but that seems like a small price to pay for a more or less
self-sustaining documentation system.

Greetings,

Johnny Halfmoon

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Get a free email account with anti spam protection.
http://www.bluebottle.com

_______________________________________________
freewrt-developers mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.freewrt.org/lists/listinfo/freewrt-developers

Reply via email to