στις 27/05/2010 23:33, O/H smu johnson έγραψε:
Some thoughts,
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 12:18 PM, pete_westg
<pete_we...@yahoo.gr <mailto:pete_we...@yahoo.gr>>
wrote:
are you sure you have understood my words? I 'm afraid you don't!
What I am not sure for, is the reason for this misunderstanding.
Perhaps, is it due to my bad English or what?
- Stating that Harbour's lack of documention is "straightly against to
the spirit of open source initiative" can be considered offensive by
many. Who made you the spokesperson of the Open Source movement? It
could be interpreted that your statement means their years of work were
done improperly.
Please don't put words in my mouth that i never said. Or please show me
even one instance of the word "Harbour" into my first post to which you
are referring. There is not one! You have just "tailored" a phrase, by
mixing your assumptions with cut-n-past parts of my lines, to base your
claim that this (the tailored) statement "can be considered offensive by
many".
I wonder what is the purpose of this conversation. Is it to accuse me,
for my comments being "offensive", "strange", "insulting", "bugging" or
whatever? I can't say to someone "do or don't feel offended". All I
can do is to explain my point, and wish that through understanding, the
reasons that make someone to feel offended would vanish. So, i must make
it clear, that when i wrote <<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>> (this is my unaltered phrase) i was not referring
specifically to Harbour but rather i was expressing a general point,
regarding the whole opensource case. and I believe, you don't need to be
a spokesperson of the OS movement to speak up your thoughts about it.
I have a sentiment that the problem in present days is not just the open
source code. you don't need to be a specialist to see it. Trillions
lines of very good code have been written and quadrillions will be
written in the close future. It is really amazing and all the respect
belongs to the great developers. On the other hand we can't ignore the
fact that we already have an infinite ocean of source code inside which
we (the community/society) could sink or we could sail. I vote to sail!
and the ship to sail and not sink, you guess it, is the documents.
To put it an other way, the crucial subject today, is not any more the
open source code. It is (and always was) the open knowledge.
And knowledge without documentations is simply impossible. Documentation
is the vehicle of knowledge. documenting is to securing the ability to
be able to use the brilliant "machines" that brilliant developers-brains
have created.
Now, Viktor will come and accuse me: "Empty words, again."
Yes, I see it. I see the emptiness in the absence of manual. I see the
emptiness in my inability to be useful in the subject.
And the question is still here, as you Viktor, say. Why we have no
documentation?
Why we have such a brilliant and huge amount of excellent code, like
Harbour has become thanks to your (and all of developers) tremendous
efforts and not an analogous documentation? We said, it is difficult to
create documentation. but if we think it better, difficulty is not the
main reason. The main reason is that nobody wants documentation so much,
nobody is "burned" to create it. and the deeper cause of this, is the
lack of belief to the great value of a documentation, is the lack of
belief to the vital significance of a manual, it is because we are much
eager for source code and we are not interested for documentation,
perhaps because is not so glorious to write documents compared to
code-writing. obviously we lack a "documenting culture"( similar to
coding culture), and for this to happen, perhaps we need empty words,
even to just have something to filling up, even to just have something
to keep the spark alive. as i see it there two directions. to get rid
off of this documentation blah-blah, which means that we'll immediately
stop bugging you the developers, or to keep searching ways how the goal
of documentation will become true. Honestly, Viktor, i 'm not interest
to bugging you, (i don't know what exactly the "bugging" is, or means,
but if it is related to the activity of a bug, then i think it's my time
to start feeling offended. However, feeling offended or not, doesn't
cure my real displeasure to feel almost guilty because i can't find a
practical way to effectively contribute documentation.
___________________________________________________________________
P.S. Strangely enough, i see no reaction to the challenging idea of
harbour-xhb merging. Does the harbour community think it was a joke or
this deafening silence express their glacial indifference about the
future of Harbour?
---
Pete
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