Open Source and Documentation
So the running joke in open source is that anytime you need to know how something works, you should just go look at the code. Thus, the documentation in the large majority of open source projects really sucks. Now, I have been a long time user and contributer to open source and have always gotten by OK, but lately have been very frustrated by the lack of documentation, especially in mature projects.
Thus, my challenge to all open source projects is that before doing a release, the project should implement a code freeze and all the committers have a documentation party. That is, the project should see how much documentation can be added in a 2 week span before doing an actual release. At a minimum, all new features should be documented and explained. Examples would be great.
After all, what is the rush to release in Open Source? It’s not like there is some company deadline that has to be met.
