Okay, let me ask you this: Why would the developers of FreeCAD demand their documentation be that inefficient and poor quality?
I mean, we’ve got two options here:
Option A: The developers of the software, the people who already know how to program at the application level, who are already familiar with at least some of the codebase, could write down what all the features are and what they do. Armed with that basic documentation, power users, folks who are specialists in using this class of software for its intended purpose, can create tutorials and coursework to teach people how to make projects in it, or create and share useful macros and extensions and whatnot, building the ecosystem, of our app specifically and FOSS software in general…OR
Option B. We can get weirdly pissy about it and insist that those end users, people who don’t have a need in their lives to know how to write software applications but do have a need in their lives to use mechanical engineering software, to gain enough proficiency in not one but two programming languages to examine the source code to figure out how it works and write the documentation themselves. The best case scenario here is it wastes a whole lot of manpower of competent coders who now have to read and familiarize themselves with someone else’s codebase. Meanwhile, a lot of smaller contributions that end users would have made get abandoned because the support they need to do that deliberately doesn’t exist. So adoption of our app specifically and of FOSS in general chills, we continue to maintain FOSS’ reputation as unusable garbage made by damaged nerds, and the people will continue to say “I would switch to Linux but I need functioning CAD software for my job/hobby so I’m going to have to keep making large recurring payments to corporations like Microsoft and Autodesk who directly support the rise of fascism in the West.”
Okay, let me ask you this: Why would the developers of FreeCAD demand their documentation be that inefficient and poor quality?
I mean, we’ve got two options here:
Option A: The developers of the software, the people who already know how to program at the application level, who are already familiar with at least some of the codebase, could write down what all the features are and what they do. Armed with that basic documentation, power users, folks who are specialists in using this class of software for its intended purpose, can create tutorials and coursework to teach people how to make projects in it, or create and share useful macros and extensions and whatnot, building the ecosystem, of our app specifically and FOSS software in general…OR
Option B. We can get weirdly pissy about it and insist that those end users, people who don’t have a need in their lives to know how to write software applications but do have a need in their lives to use mechanical engineering software, to gain enough proficiency in not one but two programming languages to examine the source code to figure out how it works and write the documentation themselves. The best case scenario here is it wastes a whole lot of manpower of competent coders who now have to read and familiarize themselves with someone else’s codebase. Meanwhile, a lot of smaller contributions that end users would have made get abandoned because the support they need to do that deliberately doesn’t exist. So adoption of our app specifically and of FOSS in general chills, we continue to maintain FOSS’ reputation as unusable garbage made by damaged nerds, and the people will continue to say “I would switch to Linux but I need functioning CAD software for my job/hobby so I’m going to have to keep making large recurring payments to corporations like Microsoft and Autodesk who directly support the rise of fascism in the West.”
OPTION FUCKING B IT IS.