[ Thanks to Brent
Toderash for this link. ]
“The need to pay technical writers as an incentive to keep
the Alternative software documentation up to date.“
“One of the biggest complaints I have as a newbie Penguinista is
that the resources are scattered all over the Internet, books, CDs
and so on; worse a lot of the information is outdated, obsolete or
unclear. The state of the Alternative Software’s documentation is
an Achilles’ heel that constitutes an obstacle to the diffusion of
free/open source software.”
“This state has its explanation if one looks to the past, as
Drummond’s article explains. Those programs came about because
programmers needed them to resolve a problem at hand. The
documentation was secondary as another programmer simply had to
look at the source code and would understand how the program works
and make the necessary changes to fulfil his needs. Ordinary users
really don’t care about having the source code, they just want a
program that does what’s designed to do with the least amount of a
learning curve.”