On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:07:26 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 4/19/2011 11:40, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Good documentation with crap software doesn't really go far either.
> 
> True, but at least with half-decent documentation, people might be more
> willing to help. If you can't even tell if what you're doing was
> *supposed* to work, even those who could improve it will be at a loss.

I kinda agree with you on this point - a lot of development is done in a 
very collaborative way, so those who could/want to improve tend to not 
work in isolation, but as part of a team that has ongoing communication.

In that respect, OSS isn't much different from closed-source development 
(at least not in my experience).  Closed-source software is developed 
before documentation is completed - documentation tends to start being 
written when the product is installable, because the screens (for 
example) tend to change before release.

Jim

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