> >>>>> "David" == david parsons <o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s> writes:
>
> David> In article <linux.kernel.d3vh8y9e1p.fsf@lxp03.cern.ch>, Jes
> David> Sorensen <Jes.Sorensen@cern.ch> wrote:
>
> >> These man pages (or whatever else) will get outdated, and there is
> >> no way to enforce that they are updated. This is a free software
> >> project, you can't just fire people for being too lazy to write
> >> documentation.
>
> David> Sure you can: ``Until you write documentation, this isn't
> David> going into the mainline kernel.''
>
> Congratulations, you just lost somewhere between 75-95% of your
> developers.
I disagree. The egcs project requires explanations for each patch before
the maintainers will consider applying it (unless it's a trivial and
obvious typo fix or equivalent). This serves as the "<foo> changed to
<bar>, here's why, and here's how to update your code" that Nat is asking
about. Contrary to your assertion, it does not seem to seriously hamper
developers from working on the project, and it may even help some of them
keep up-to-date with changes outside their particular area(s) of speciality.
For creating *new* documentation -- when to use what functions, and so on --
of course it is not reasonable to ask people to do this before their patches
will be accepted. This sort of documentation is going to be harder to find
authors for, but that would be a problem whether or not you require doc
updates with code updates.
-- Michael
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