On 8/23/07, Robert Penn Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Again, I'm not bashing anyone. But in my opinion most folks are not > being unreasonable in the complaint that the documentation is lacking. > And it's mighty hard to generate that documentation when you're still > trying to figure it out yourself. > > Well, that pretty much wraps up my argument for why people complaining > about documentation are not automatically lazy, stupid, or bad programmers.
What is reasonable to expect for something you haven't payed for? If you have bought something then its reasonable to expect it to function as advertised. If for instance you've paid for the Quick Start Guide and there are book has came through the post as soggy mess you can complain and get your money back from the publisher. If you have been given a free gift, then your right to complain is rather diminished. Rather it equates to about how much you paid for it, and how much you were promised for this payment. I wouldn't disagree with desire to have more and better documentation, we can all "desire" this. It's another thing all together to make demands upon others that have already given so much. With a community driven project that gives so much for free, if you wish to additional stuff on top they you have to be prepared to pay with your own time, skills and good will. One thing you can't expect form the community is for it to owe you anything, you aren't owned training for free, support for free, let alone any code. If you don't know anything about C++, scene graphs, OpenGL, real-time graphics then its unreasonable to expect others to fill in the gaps in your skills base. If you want to learn to be a doctor, well you go to medical college, you *pay* for the tuition. You want to learn about how to mend a car, you go buy a instruction manual for a local shop and enroll in a car mechanics course. What we have here is it seems, is that we've not only given a car away free, and the right to freely duplicate it, and some basic documentation, again for free, and a community that is willing to help out where and when time permits. All this is pretty awesome, yet because of all this stuff is given away for free and with goodwill that we somehow owe more. We have to teach you how to do your job too. If you expectation are unresonable then you will be disappointed. Considering you pay nothing for the product or support for it what you truely should expect is nothing from it or its community, *nothing* is the only reasonably thing to expect. If you expect any more than nothing you have nothing more to expect or demand that disappointment - this isn't the fault of the project or its community, the fault lies with your own unreasonable expectations. Now if you are contributor, then there are grounds for some expectation, expectation that you contribution will be given due consideration and respect for the effort that you expended on it. Companies that pay for bespoke development, training or support, they too have grounds for expectation. Thankfully the vast majority of straight users are polite and respectful and appreciate what help they can get. Occasionally we do get souls who's expectations are well beyond what is reasonable to expect from a community, this tiny minority sour things for everybody. Expect nothing and you will be amazed what you can get for nothing. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
