To Pete, [ Sorry to reply here, but I'm readonly user of users-list. ]
> yeah, sure! "very well" and "very idealistic".. > (but please keep in mind that idealism is the container of fanaticism > -and of any obnoxious "-ism" in general. we don't need them any more.) > "asking" is not only a right, is the "creative trigger" for everything > being made by human race; and please don't confuse "asking" with > "demanding" nor "user" with "consumer". Into the subject now, maybe it's > difficult to understand and accept it but, "documenting" is more > valuable than "coding" itself. IMHO, documentation is (or must be) on > upper top, in the scale of open source priorities, since documents, or > better the lack of documents, is straightly against to the spirit of > open source initiative, because if open source, due to lack of > documents, is not easily understandable/self-learn-able, becomes > unusable to wider programmer-cycles and degenerates to a cryptic tool in > hands of an illuminated elite, less or not at all, different than closed > software. And this is a real problem with wider consequences than you > can imagine. Of course nobody can demand from developers to write > manuals. All that one could ask from them is to be, their coding, more > documentation friendly, ensuring this way that their valuable and very > respectable labor and creation won't go in vain.. Strange and insulting thoughts towards anyone who have dedicated huge amount (many years) of (maybe even full time) to take this project where it is now. Maybe you could elaborate on what you mean by "documentation friendly code"... If coding means nothing to you, pls delete all the Harbour sources and try to use it after... If documentation is so important, why wasn't there even a single person (f.e. you?) who would take the pain and write even a small snippet of it? By now if every user who benefitted from this free product named Harbour, would have done so, we'd probably have a full documentation. All information is right there in the source, mailing list and ChangeLog, open and accessible to everyone, and all educated questions (unlike the one that started off this thread) used to be answered on our forums, and yes it sometimes triggers ideas as you say, but the emphasis is on "educated". Remember you got something for free, so before demanding anything, asking for more or complaining like children, think about what _you_ can do to change the situation. Idealism is thinking that you get can everything from thin air, without thinking, learning, contributing and/or paying for it. In reality potential users have three choices for _all_ open source software: - don't use it - accept what's offered - contribute (that's also the best form to say "thank you") Viktor _______________________________________________ Harbour mailing list (attachment size limit: 40KB) Harbour@harbour-project.org http://lists.harbour-project.org/mailman/listinfo/harbour
