Re: [oswg-dis] Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)

["Jeremy D. Zawodny" <Jeremy@Zawodny.com>]

On Sun, Jan 09, 2000 at 10:01:56PM -0500, Deb Richardson wrote:

> (Note: this is going to be my last crossposted message.  I'll be posting
> all followups only to ode-discuss@oswg.org.  Archives will be available
> if anyone misses anything.)

Fair enough. I'll come really close to that myself.

> Aaron Turner wrote:
> 
> > Personally I would be very interested in getting the Free/Open/NetBSD and
> > other groups involved in such a project.  I however also feel (rather
> > strongly) that content should be compartimentalized so that when I'm
> > looking for getting Apache to run on Linux I don't keep running into
> > FreeBSD centeric docs.  Of course these compartments can overlap, but we
> > need to be able to split it up for the end user.
> 
> This is where things get complicated.  Who should document Apache, for
> example?  The Apache Group?  The LDP for Linux?  The FreeBSD for
> FreeBSD?  Etc.  Logically, of course, Apache should be documented by the
> Apache group.

Depends on your logic, I suppose. In *MY* mind, the logical answer is:

  Whoever writes the best Apache documentation.

Just like selecting a Linux distribution or a BSD flavor. I pick the
one that I do because I believe it to be the best for my needs.

> Additional documentation can be written to further enhance existing
> docs -- enhancements by the LDP for Linux, by the FreeBSD folks for
> their OS, etc.  There could even be separate expansions written for
> each separate Linux distribution -- "Apache on Red Hat", "Apache on
> Debian", etc.

Yes. True.

> Should all of these documents be stored in the same place and maintained
> by the same group?  No.  Apache docs belong with the Apache projects,
> LDP docs with the LDP, and so on.  
> 
> On the other hand, a centralized "card catalog" like that the Open
> Source Research Team (OSRT) is working to develop, should and could
> effectively index and cross reference all of these documents.  The docs
> aren't in the same location, nor are they controlled or updated by the
> same group.

I agree.

Why treat the documentation for our free software any differently than
the software itself? There are several BSD variations. Several Linux
variations (in a different way). They all compete. This is good.

Yet I can still find the software I want for them by visiting a very
few sites, such as freshmeat. It doesn't take all day. Let's just make
the same true for documentation, be it OS or application
documentation.

Is that your aim? That's where I'd like to see things go.

Granted, I've only contributed one HOWTO to the LDP, but this stuff
sounds as if it is getting out of hand--people are trying to over-plan
everything, with committees, councils, advisory groups, and
whatnot. "We" seem to be advocating a very large hammer to squash what
is ultimately a rather small bug when it is not considered in
isolation.

Jeremy
-- 
Jeremy D. Zawodny                Web Geek, Perl Hacker, etc.
http://www.wcnet.org/~jzawodn/   Jeremy@Zawodny.com


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