On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Hadar Pedhazur wrote:
Bradford wrote:
This is unusual, I realize, but I'm going to tell you why I'm giving up on Zope now.
[I'm snipping most of your post, because you say the cogent part above, and follow it up with a plea for better documentation].
I am very sorry to see you go. We all understand and feel for your frustration. We hate to lose even a single person because of a stupid reason like this, but alas, it is a chicken and egg problem. We are building a large and complex system, all at our own risk. We give it away, and support the hell out of it, and yes, documentation lags (sometimes too much).
Hadar, I'm afraid I simply can't *afford* to sympathize with your last sentence and frankly I'm becoming very weary of seeing that sentiment put forth. As much as I may disagree with some of the ideas espoused by Richard Stallman, I wholeheartedly agree with his notion that application software lacking properly prepared documentation shouldn't be released until that defect has been fixed. Period. I doubt that the documentation writer DC has hired will ever catch up in the current climate. I doubt that DC will ever achieve its goals until that problem is addressed. If I were running DC, I'd declare the following policy, effective immediately: """The current feature freeze on 2.0 will now be supplemented by a development freeze. All developers, salespeople, in fact anyone with a brain and a pair of eyes and hands, will reassign themselves to supporting the documentation effort until that effort has come abreast of the current and near-term development. Henceforth, we will *not* release until documentation is in hand."""