Re: soapbox - was: press for cygwin

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 02:27:20AM -0700, J. J. Farrell wrote:
>From: Tim Baggett <tim@acca.nmsu.edu>
>Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 17:50:25 -0600 (MDT)
>>
>> Even better, was the fact that your answers were
>> polite rather than demeaning, which is typical from some
>> arrogant RedHat/Cygwin folks who often prefer to spend more time showing
>> an attitude than actually being helpful.
>
>I was interested to hear this about the RedHat folks. Could you
>let us have more precise details? For example - in August, how
>many hours did Chris and Corinna spend showing an attitude and
>how many hours did they spend working on Cygwin? Or do you not
>consider doing things like improving the setup mechanism and
>porting and enhancing OpenSSH to run on Cygwin as being helpful?

I'm about to release Cygwin 1.3.3.  You can see, from the change
description, the amount of effort that Corinna and I and others put into
improving Cygwin.

>>To the core group as a whole, consider your documentation.
>>Documentation is an essential part of project management, yet I see
>>none of that activity being done here.  Check out the following link
>>and see how out dated the User's Guide is:
>>
>>http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/installing-binaries.html
>>
>>How is someone supposed to read through this document and know that the
>>information they obtain is even partially accurate?  I haven't seen an
>>update to the User's Guide in well over a year.  I am thankful to the
>>volunteer who recently stepped up last month to make some changes to
>>the FAQ.
>>
>>No...  Do not tell me I need to get involved and take on a
>>documentation project.  I would love to contribute to Cygwin, but I do
>>not know nearly enough to take on such a task, nor am I part of this
>>elite group who prefers not to answer beginning questions.
>
>It's a shame that you can't do this yourself.  It surprises me a little
>that you know enough to see that a document is wrong, but don't know
>enough to research the incorrect areas, ask questions of the experts,
>and then correct the document.  I've worked with many technical authors
>over the years.  None of them knew the first thing about the projects
>when they started, and many had very little technical knowledge at all.
>All were able to produce competent user documentation from scratch
>after a few weeks of gathering information, and some of their work was
>outstanding.  I think anyone with reasonable ability in written
>English, and enough technical knowledge to use Cygwin, should be able
>to update an existing document.

Right.  In the case of documentation, if someone just contributes actual
words that they think are more appropriate, I'm certainly willing to
update things.

I'd love to have someone to focus on improving the documentation but our
two previous maintainers have moved on to other things and my repeated
pleas for help seem to have been for naught.

Is the quoted chapter in the documentation wrong?  Of course it is.  It's
a bug that the documentation is wrong just like it is a bug that sshd
doesn't work quite right on Windows 95.  We'll deal with it like any
bug and fix it eventually.  If someone actually can get out of their
"I'm too busy/ignorant/disgusted" mode long enough to provide actual
useful text (or code) that always makes things much easier for everyone.

In this particular case, I think that the fact that there is a link on
the main web page for dealing with cygwin installation should mitigate
most of the problems with the incorrect documentation.  The documentation
should be updated, though, of course.

Btw, the last doc update was in June, which is obviously more recent
than "well over a year".

>But don't be coy, man - name names! Who precisely is it that you are
>demanding should do this work?  Chris Faylor?  Corinna Vinschen?  Chuck
>Hansen?  Ernie Boyd?  One of the many others?  Do you have a
>cost/benefit analysis to show why it is more important to update this
>document than to do the Cygwin-related tasks that they are currently
>working on?  Or are you demanding that they should give up more of
>their time to do it?  In that case, it's probably even more important
>to show why it is better for them to do this work instead of playing
>with their children, earning a living, going skiing, or whatever.

I think you mean "Chuck Wilson" but thanks for asking direct questions
like this.

This mail was rather interesting because it seemed to be in response to
a rather mild thread where people were concerned that misinformation
about cygwin would be spread by an inaccurate article.  If I understand
the mail it said basically: "This poor guy has put out a lot of work and
you are all criticizing him for saying one or two wrong things rather
than being appreciative of his efforts."

Heh.  That seems sort of ironic to me.

>I believe the vast majority of Cygwin users are extremely grateful
>for all the work that the developers put in on this project. Those
>who whine about its deficiencies or complain about the attitudes
>of major contributors form a very small minority, even if they are
>heard from frequently. For what little they're worth, my thanks to
>everyone who contributes to Cygwin.

You're welcome.  I appreciate this very much.  I'm sure that the other
"core developers" do too.

cgf

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