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One of the main reasons why I dislike Open Source software
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One of the main reasons why I dislike Open Source software

drmikedrmike Member
edited December 2011 in General

I'm using this project as an example simply because it came down with an apt-get this morning. Nothing against the author or the project itself.

Can someone tell me what this is?

http://acpid.sourceforge.net/

It's like every time I view documentation, this is what I see. Project admins assume that those looking at their website are going to know and understand what they're looking at and/or have a background in the field.

Lovely.

edit: Well I guess I should upgrade it.....

Comments

  • kylixkylix Member
    edited December 2011

    It's the same what Windows calles ACPI. ACPI is the power management of the OS and a defined standard and OS-independent.

  • The only thing that seems to be unclear is what ACPI is. Why don't you just wikipedia it?
    The alternative would be that anyone who writes a program that has anything to do with ACPI writes an explaination of it in his own words... Which would probably be far less understandable and less frequently updated than the Wikipedia article

  • @gsrdgrdghd said: Why don't you just wikipedia it?

    Why should I view a second documentation source when it should be on the first? Why couldn't he or she say "ACPI is the power management of the OS" there instead of assuming that that's what it is? I did google for it and the home page I linked to is what comes up first so I've already gone that route.

    Again, this is just an example, not a specific. Please remember that. Most open source projects are like that I come across. There's nothing on the front page that actually states what a program actually does. Many sites go right into a list of updates or recent bug fixes.

  • @drmike said: There's nothing on the front page that actually states what a program actually does.

    You are soooo right!!!

  • Documentation for stuff like acpid is not for people who have no clue what it is, it's for people who DO know what it is and are looking for specific information about the program.

  • +1, NickM. If it was any use to you, you'd know what it was. The thing about open source is that there's so much niche stuff like that. You don't need to know what 99% of it does. Is there a closed source alternative that's better documented? I doubt it. Is there even a closed source alternative to most of it? Not usually.

    Disliking open source software makes absolutely no sense to me, especially because of a lack of clear documentation. If there's no good documentation, use something that has better documentation. If there's nothing with better documentation, whatever it is you're interested in is obviously so esoteric that you're lucky someone coded it, and released it, at all.

    Open source means that if the dev decides to pack it in, and their site disappears off the net, someone else can pick it up and continue the project. Someone else could even write the documentation.

    Thanked by 1Christian
  • @NickM said: it's for people who DO know what it is

    Which means that if I don't know what it's about, I have no interest in it, right?

    Not talking about acpid of course, but 2 lines on a front page or even a simple about page could help a lot of visitor to know if they should try to dig more or not.

  • bretonbreton Member
    edited December 2011
    1. man acpid
    2. info acpid
    3. cat, zless /usr/share/doc/acpid/*
    4. http://wiki.debian.org/acpid

    If you use terminal, you know what you are doing. If you don't know what are you doing, you DON'T use terminal and install ubuntu and click "upgrade for me everything" buttons there or hire people, who know what they are doing.

    Opensource != free software.
    Free (like speech), open, closed source has nothing to do with documentation quality.
    Free (like speech), open, closed source has nothing to do with price.

    Dixi.

  • @TigersWay said: Which means that if I don't know what it's about, I have no interest in it, right?

    My point is that the documentation of acpid is NOT the place to learn about ACPI, just like the documentation for Disk Defragmenter, for example, is not the place to learn about hard drives. In the open source world, there's an emphasis on "Do one thing, and do it well", and that applies to documentation too. The docs describe the software - Wikipedia is for learning about stuff that you don't know anything about.

    The docs say:

    ACPID is a completely flexible, totally extensible daemon for delivering ACPI events.

    Anyone with half a brain (and who isn't a lazy bum) who actually wants to know what ACPI is will google it.

    @breton said: If you don't know what are you doing, you DON'T use terminal and install ubuntu and click "upgrade for me everything" buttons

    I take offense to the notion that people choose Ubuntu because they don't know what they're doing when it comes to Linux. I use Ubuntu (actually, Kubuntu since I prefer KDE) not because I don't know what I'm doing, but because it "Just Works". The past few weeks, I was using Debian unstable with openbox, and after several weeks of tweaking and configuring, I still hadn't settled into the workflow, and I wasn't getting anything done.

    Simply put, Kubuntu lets me install and be up and running in about 30 minutes. I guess I just don't have the patience to configure and tweak my system for weeks to get everything exactly how I want it. Sure, I could have just installed KDE, but at that point, I'm losing most of the benefits of installing a minimal system anyways.

    /rant

    Thanked by 1Adam
  • ACPID is a completely flexible, totally extensible daemon for delivering ACPI events.

    Just by reading that line, I understand what it does, of course I know what ACPI is, if you don't, you should look it up. Or maybe look at the source? The wonders of open source!

  • I agree this is a problem for MANY F/OSS programs - many more than closed-source with the same problem - but that's more a difference that the closed-source programs are proprietary and have time to spend explaining and selling (WOW!) their program. Really it's not a difference between open and closed, it's between $0 income and >$0 income.

    ACPID is a horrible example of a program with this problem though. It really doesn't need to explain what ACPI is, because there are plenty of sources that would do a better job than a one-liner on that page if you were interested.

  • So if we use same rationale, we should expect each and every VPS providers to explain -
    1) What is a VPS?
    2) Why do we call it "Virtual", "Private", "Server"?
    3) What does it mean by Virtualization?
    4) What is the difference between different type of Virtualization?
    5) What is a server?
    6) What is root login?
    7) What is IP address?
    8) What is SolusVM?
    9) How does SolusVM work?
    10) Why do we use SolusVM?
    11) What are other alternatives to it?
    12) What is OpenVZ?
    13) How does it work?
    14) Why do we use it?
    15) What are other alternatives?
    16) What is Xen?
    17) How does it work?
    18) Why do we use it?
    19) What are other alternatives?
    20) What is Xen PV?
    21) How does it work?
    22) Why do we use it?
    23) What are other alternatives?
    24) What is Xen HVM?
    25) How does it work?
    26) Why do we use it?
    27) What are other alternatives?

    In fact, I can go on and on asking questions about all the Keywords I can find in a website selling VPS. Do we expect such answers to be present in the website of a VPS provider? If the answer is NO, then why do we expect such thing from an Open Source Project?

    I'm sure if anyone asks some of the above questions we will reply saying - "Hey, Google it!"

    Bottom line is, we are very familiar with VPS terms. So we don't feel the necessity of an explanation of those terms in VPS providers website. Similarly for the acpid developer, ACPI is a very common term. So he may think it's unnecessary to provide an explanation of the term "ACPI".

    If you are not sure, just Google it.

    Thanked by 2trelawney Aldryic
  • I feel like ACPID doesn't need an in-depth explanation on what it does. It's not an end-user program that you go out and download unless you explicitly need it, it's probably included in your distro by default anyway (or an alternative acpi daemon).

    You don't have to explain your project to groups that have no clue what it's for.

  • maxexcloomaxexcloo Member
    edited December 2011

    It's amazing that no one has taken the time and investment to create a website capable of searching for definitions for these things.
    Wait, they have, it's called Google, here's how to use it: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=ACPI

  • @biplab said: Bottom line is, we are very familiar with VPS terms. So we don't feel the necessity of an explanation of those terms in VPS providers website

    Just imagine you - in a very different world - were looking - yes, on google - for your next "Vertical Powered Shuttle", and arrived on that VPS provider website :-)

    Ok, it's a joke. I still believe a few words introduction is seldom lost!

  • Let's actually focus on what DrMike is trying to communicate, and not the specific example he used to communicate it with.

    Take an arbitrary entry from ps in even a stock install of Ubuntu, Google it, and try to find a straight answer on what the process is doing. It shouldn't be nearly as difficult as it is. Now, try finding documentation on if it can or can not safely be disabled, and what you lose out on by doing so - if anything.

    Good luck.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I think the confusion here is that acpid != ACPI and thus why drmike is confused. The developers of acpid did not explain what ACPI is because, well, they shouldn't have to.

  • @Rendus said: Take an arbitrary entry from ps in even a stock install of Ubuntu, Google it, and try to find a straight answer on what the process is doing.

    Take an arbitrary entry from Windows task manager in a stock install of Windows 7, Google it, and try to find a straight answer on what the process is doing.
    You will have the same problems (or even more) as on linux.

  • @NickM said: In the open source world, there's an emphasis on "Do one thing, and do it well"

    That's a Unix philosophy. It applies to open source software only by association, and not always.

    I think DrMike's point has some validity. Websites for OSS are frequently built from the software's documentation, which focuses on the software's features and use. That's exactly what documentation should do.

    But a website should be more than program documentation. It should, I think, make an attempt to place the program in a larger context. Some developer's in fact do this. I particularly like the sites where the developer has taken the time to list "similar software".

    But explaining the larger context, how your program fits and why it should be used is really the focus area of marketing, and for most OSS developers marketing comes after the last item on the to-do list.

  • I agree with quite a few of the good points made on the lack of documentation from more amateur OSS; however, I strongly disagree that this should be a point against open source in general. That'd be like bringing back all of the bias and bigotry from the past century just because one black kid with his pants hanging down past his ass gave me a funny look.

  • Actually what I think the good Doc is trying to say is that if you are kind of new to Linux and Open source in general finding good documentation can be difficult. He the example he used may not have been the best one, but most of you have focused on that. It was not his point. That program has been around awhile and has many sources of information for it in many places. Some of the programs people write barely have enough information on the site to tell you the name of them. These are the ones he is talking about.

    Let's say I write a program called "equatux". Now I make a website called equatux.org. Talk about how good equatux works, how long it took me to develop it, what comes next for it, etc.... What did I leave out? Oh yeah what does equatux do maybe? How does it do it? Why is it better then the 40 programs just like it?

    I think that is what Doc is getting at. They give part of the equation but not all of it. It just works and use it, is not good enough for some people and I happen to be one of those people also. I like to know how and why things work the way they do. Is this not why we have Open Source? So that others can see the how and why and maybe expand on it?

  • I think what we are witnessing here is more a function of it being an inexperienced one man operation than the fact that it is open source. He could have easily made his software closed source, charged $1, and he would still be lacking documentation.

    I don't see this as a knock against open source software at all; some OSS is awesome and rivals the best commercial software out there, some OSS is a kids first project. The fact that they are both open source leaves little in common.

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