Re: kernel documentation is bad

Randy D. Scott (scottr@wwa.com)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 21:13:16 -0500 (CDT)


> Because the developer doesn't want to spend his time writing documentation,
> and you are not in a position to demand that he do so. In a more colloquial
> manner, you got what you paid for.

[...]

> Rereading this, I'm afraid you may take my remarks in a vein in
> which I don't intend. This isn't meant as a flame, just an invitation
> to consider a different perspective.

However, it sounds quite like a flame.

I'm tired of debating this. You aren't seeing my point.

>From the way you speak, the developers work individually, they have
no sense of cooperation, they are out only to see that their
"feature-of- the-week" gets into the kernel, and have no regard
for the true "group effort." Which, is partly true, but, partly
not true. My point is, that through better documentation efforts,
the developers AND Linux end-users could possibly benefit by having
stronger, more reliable code.

The fact that documentation is a necessary part of the software
development lifecycle is a known, and well proven fact. This,
however, I grant you, does not prove that it will help Linux kernel
development. Unfortunately, because of the "my way is always right"
attitude of the developers, we will never see if increased
documentation efforts will improve kernel quality and developer
productivity.

This is my 2 bits, and my last two bits on this subject.