tlug: Oxymoron in free software development sighted!

[Stephen Turnbull <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com> writes:

    Matt> The 'release early and often' paradigm seems to work well
    Matt> for many projects ... on the other hand Donald Knuth doesn't
    Matt> participate in *any* online activities, from what I hear,
    Matt> but he managed to write some damn good pieces of free
    Matt> software. So being inaccessible until the product is done
    Matt> may be sort of in the TeX tradition.

The TeXBook was already available in draft form when I first used TeX
in 1981(2?).  Knuth did not have the technology the Omega developers
have to interact with others.  Instead, Knuth used documentation to
achieve accessibility to others.

When you say "programmers are serious," then design and code quality
are uppermost.  But when you talk about developers, developers produce 
products, and products must be documented.  Serious developers take
documentation seriously.

If free software is going achieve World Domination Now, for some Now
in our lifetimes, free software projects have to get serious about
documentation.  Many already are, a very optimistic trend.  It worries 
me that internationalization projects tend to be an exception.

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