Hello, John! On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 10:43:40AM -0600, John Calcote wrote: > > I honestly don't get why you have a problem with this attitude in open > source software. ... > There are pros and cons to commercial software. The division "open source" vs "commercial" is wrong. you certainly know that open source is a development model, it can be and it is used both in commercial and non-commercial projects. > Open source is different - it's also driven by various forces - just not the > same ones. ... > Open source software manuals are a great example of this aspect of > OSS contribution - did the original author NEED a nice manual? Of course not > - he wrote the software. The manual was written for others. When I look at the motives for writing free software listed on www.gnu.org [0], I conclude that they are in fact the same that drive the developers of proprietary software. therefore, if free software is written for profit, its developers may NEED a nice manual for the same reasons as developers of proprietary software; and if free software is written as a result of political beliefs, the author of course did need a good manual. On the other hand, the documentation of proprietary products is not always written by the same people, it's often a different department or even a completely unrelated company. (If you mean "commercial" vs "non-commercial" free software, the same argument applies.) [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-motives.html > (By the way - there IS a free version of the book online - check it out at > http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/books/autotools_a_guide_to_autoconf_auto > make_libtool. This was my first draft - it's not quite as complete or up to > date, but it's about 85% of the same content as the published book and > formatted in a similar manner. I could have requested that the site owner, > Tony Mobily, remove it from the site and he would have complied (because > he's a nice guy), but I felt it was important to contribute back to the > community in some way for the help they gave me in writing the book in the > first place.) I hope you didn't intend to say that people have to restrict their readers in order to get money for writing manuals. that wouldn't be true. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
