On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 04:01:07PM -0600, Mac McCaskie wrote: > Pigeon wrote: > >But why should they be deprived of the opportunity to use it simply because > >others can't figure out how to? Sure, it's tough on those who can't figure > >it out, but that's no reason to make life hard for those who can. > > This agruement contradicts itself. ??? > On the one hand it is stated plainly about the supierior support > available in the Linux world. In general, this is true. In particular cases, documentation is lacking, but one is still, IMO, more likely to get a useful response from sources of support other than documentation, such as Googling or asking on debian-user. > On the other hand it is stated we don't have to give support and if you > can't figure it out on your own then tough. That misrepresents what I was saying. I wouldn't dispute that lack of documentation is a sub-optimal situation. I do dispute that it is a reason to deny access to a facility to those who can get by without adequate documentation. > So what is it? It's the result of people providing facilities because they want to, and are free to do it in the way that they want to. Most authors/maintainers of free software provide documentation. Some do it better than others. One or two can't be bothered to provide any, and users of their packages have to inspect the source code, ask others, etc. - a situation which could certainly do with improvement, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and it only applies to a few cases. Most loaves are whole loaves, with a couple of croissants thrown in for good measure. -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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