[Lazarus] Project management

[Martin]

On 01/03/2012 00:35, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Juha Manninen schrieb:
>
>> So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be 
>> managed differently from how it is managed now?
>
> IMO it's not so much a matter of management, but of mind shift. The 
> developers should share more of their knowledge, apart from only 
> writing code. Until then every management attempt will be ineffective.
>
> BTW this is not a criticism on Lazarus only, I found that attitude in 
> many open source projects, and small (one-man) companies. Failure to 
> educate co-workers is usually justified by a lack of time ("busy with 
> more important things"), and results in never decreasing work load.

Well but it is a question of philosophy then, isn't it?

"provide what is required (answer questions)" versus "provide all (or 
some/lots) upfront"

It does still cost time to write up all the info, and guarantees 
nothing. While if someone wants to do work on something, there are much 
better chances that the work (providing infos/answers) will bear fruits.
So the 2nd seems much more cost efficient.  [read 4 paragraph below 
"flood of seekers", before answering to this]

To be noted. This is *not* about docs how to *use* the code, but about 
how to *extend* it.

Sure some say, providing upfront, will attract more new developers. I 
have doubts, but I do not know.
Getting individualized answers to your questions, rather that having to 
go through masses of docs, seems far more attractive to me.

Leaves to talk about the quality of those answers. But should indeed 
that quality lack, then what makes any one thing that the docs would be 
better in quality?
And should the person who could answer become unavailable, then yes 
indeed documentation would help (until outdated, as the sack of a 
maintainer would lead to this)

In comparison it seems to me, that for the seeker "answer" vs "doc" has 
similar efficiency, but for the provider docs only become of interest, 
if there is a real flood of seekers.

Just my opinion...
(It is only 4 years I was a seeker myself, so I do speak from experience)

--------------
Oh, and because it may get mentioned. Yes answers often 
encourage/require to read the code, in order to understand. But again, 
if docs are done by the same people, they would do the same.