Re: Documentation and Usability
On Saturday 17 January 2004 2:22 pm, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> If there's a package that will solve a problem for me, I would rather
> have it available without any documentation at all than have it
> completely unavailable due to lack of documentation.
Amen, I actually find I get better support on Free Software than on
commercial products... between Google, IRC and devel mailinglists.
I had a problem with MondoArchive erroring out... I posted the error it
was giving me with a copy of the error log to the list. About an hour later
the lead developer for the product said "Try changing the variable on line
whatever and recompile; Let me know if that works."
I had a feature request for Pan awhile back, the project lead said "thats a
good idea put it in bugzilla", and it got added and I was mentioned in the
changelog (very cool).
I have found that if you drop the attitude that they owe you something,
and read the availible FAQs that you will get support for free that is often
far better than what you can get with commercial software. I'd rather ask
the guy that *wrote* it my question, than some suit with a script reading
canned answers.
Yeah Open Source doesn't require any payment, but I see filing bugreports
and feature requests as my way of helping to make the software I use better,
and as far as I am concerned is /how/ you pay for the software.
--
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
-- Lazarus Long
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