On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 13:33:35 PM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > M. Fioretti wrote: > >>> So, my advice is "just do it". someone will fix it. >> >> Here I could simply answer "after you, please" or repeat what I wrote >> above: we're talking about quality, not quantity. > There is a problem peculiar to the free/open source world in that poor > quality versions of things have no reason to ever go away. What we're discussing now, that is your "just do it, someone will fix it" approach, has nothing whatever to do with the software license. Because we're talking of documentation written, or possibly improved, by third parties, not the developers. > I don't have a solution for this - it is just an observation that if > anyone ever releases bad documentation or even advice, others will > be finding and following it years later via google and other > archives. but this is a problem only because releasing crap documentation (the "just do it, someone will fix it" kind) is much, much easier than releasing good stuff, which is again the only point I was making. In the Postfix example, if such documentation existed the Postfix gurus would simply tell newbie "don't read A, read B". Instead they say "don't read A, read the mountain of over-detailed stuff at postfix.org even if you could go by with one decent, ten page how-to". > I have a different take on this. Complex programs like postfix have > (and need) thousands of options to cover every possible > case... Rather than confuse people who should be just following > standards with the thousands of options they shouldn't touch anyway, > we need a dozen templates for this sort of program. Right. Now, who could write such good templates, ie distill without errors those thousands of options and explain the result clearly, in order to minimize misunderstandings, except the developers themselves or (much better) some pretty good technical writer who's either paid to do it or already financially secure? We keep going back to the original point, don't we? (and probably could well stop here, since we're not the ones who could fix this and it isn't Fedora-specific in any way) 'night Marco -- Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how software is used *around* you: http://digifreedom.net/node/84 -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
