A confused Network Admin

[Paul Spencer]

This is a personal gripe and is not directed at Christine - she just got
me started thinking about it :)

There is some confusion here in assuming that Open Source = FREE.  It
doesn't mean that at all.

For those of you that like to be able to call up Tech Support, I doubt
that you got the product for free in the first place and that's where
part of your money goes ... paying for Tech Support and Documentation.

For the MapServer community in general, if you want better
documentation, it has to be paid for either by contributing time writing
the documentation or financially supporting those who can write the
documentation.  Its not going to write itself.  If you aren't prepared
to contribute then I guess you don't really have a problem.

Paul

Lisi, Christine wrote:
> Marco - I couldn't have put it better myself.  The best OpenSource
> documentation of the four I have dealt with in the last 2 weeks came
> with PHP; twenty-three pages of step-by-step instructions, and they
> didn't forget about Windows users.  I agree that this listserver
> wouldn't be nearly as busy if the documentation on the OpenSource
> products was more complete and precise, and I also wish there was more
> of a collaborative effort between the programmers when releasing new
> versions.
>
> All I can say is, thank goodness for this listserver because I could
> have never gotten through this with documentation alone.
>
> Christine Lisi
> Application Specialist
>
> Management Information Systems * City of Delray Beach * 100 NW First
> Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33444
>
> Phone, 561-243-7142 * Fax, 561-243-7166 * eMail, Lisi at MyDelrayBeach.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Marco Marsella
> Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 1:07 PM
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] A confused Network Admin
>
> I would like to reassure Christine that she's not the only one confused
> about OpenSource in general and MapServer in particular. I have over 25
> years of professional programming experience in too many languages,
> starting with FORTRAN IV when some of the listers here where probably
> not even able to read yet ;-)
>
> I find myself also *very* confused because of the terribly poor
> documentation that usually complements OpenSource projects. Most often
> than not, there is just a very technical document that tersely explains
> what you can do with this or that parameter. With most Java projects
> you just find the JavaDoc! There is little or no high-level
> documentation that explains the architecture and lets you find your way
> around. Most of the projects require that you spend an inordinate
> amount of time looking at the code to understand what you can do and
> how.
>
> For me, I find the MapServer documentation absolutely insufficient and
> it is amazing how people prefer to spend a lot of time replying on this
> list rather than investing much more efficiently their time writing
> decent documentation and providing good tutorials and examples.
>
> Please, do not misunderstand me! I think MapServer is a terrific
> project and I am incredibly grateful to the very knowledgeable guys out
> there willing to help through the list. Only, I would much prefer
> having good documentation to work through and bother the listers only
> when absolutely necessary.
>
> As you may have seen, I put my.. time where the mouth is. As soon as I
> learn how to do something, I will post a message to the list hoping
> that it might be of help to others (see "[UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] A
> simple... sample!" dated 10 Feb 2005). Sure, it is a trivial example,
> but it took me *a lot* of time (and a zillion Google searches) to
> figure out, much longer than I would expect! I will be more than happy
> to continue doing so to alleviate the trouble of learning MapServer!
>
> Cheers
>
> Marco
>
>

--
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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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