Saul Luizaga wrote:
> I see. Is there a council or .org that regulates open source projects 

I think it's more that open source authors are writing code for themselves. 
They don't need to document it, because they know what it does. The next 
person coming along can't document it because they *don't* know what it 
does. By the time that next person understands well enough to document it, 
*they* don't need to document it. All of which slows down the adoption of 
that particular piece of open source.

I've come to learn that if your project has a wiki, it probably means "we 
have no documentation, and we're hoping the users will supply it."  A few 
notable exceptions, sure, but not many.

Actually, I think that's a good question for the next person I interview for 
a commercial position: "Have you added functionality to any open source 
project?" Yes.  "Show me the documentation you wrote for programmers who 
come after you."  Ooops.   No wonder software is so unreliable.

It's not like programmers don't know how to document stuff. They just don't 
feel the need to, because it's no benefit to *them*, since they're giving 
the code away for free and don't really care whether someone else can use it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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