Why open source documentation lags

[menotu]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/why-open-source-documentation-lags/6484?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnet%2Fopen-source+%28ZDNet+Open+Source%29

[parnote]

Interesting find, menotu. As someone who has written some program documentation, I can attest that it is a rather arduous task to write intelligible, helpful documentation.

parnote

[menotu]

I thought you'd find it of interest Parnote.

[Village Idiot]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree.  

PcLinuxOS has very good documentation that is hardwired into the install that points you to the wiki, forum and other useful information. I never received any manual for my copy of XP that came with the eee-pc. A few pages of basic usage and that was it- after that the user is on his own. To install the PcLinuxOS, the information is there in the same location. If I had to redo my winxp, I need to aggregate information from three or four different sources and even then I'd be flying blind.

Secondly, just about every program I use has either a man page or a --help I can punch in. This is non-existent elsewhere.

If anything there is too much information on the man pages, I'd actually prefer to see examples and a short explanation of each one rather than the giant list of switches you get.

jmo. I'm probably wrong.  

[menotu]

This wasn't a reference to PCLinuxOS in any way whatsoever.

[Village Idiot]

This wasn't a reference to PCLinuxOS in any way whatsoever.

No. Of course not. 

I was trying to bring the argument that I believe OSS documentation is better than alot of people realize.