Re: THANKS! Re: Software engineer tech. writers? Do they exist?

["Edgar D' Souza" <edgar -dot- b -dot- dsouza -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On 9/4/07, Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> > I'd like to follow-up with a second question: while it's not unusual for
> > a software developer to contribute code to an open-source software
> > project, I haven't (personally) seen much evidence of tech. writers
> > contributing documentation, manuals, etc. to open-source software
> > projects.
>
> It's something I thought about but I simply don't have the bandwidth.

Likewise. I use a lot of FOSS software, but haven't gotten around to
actually contributing. While the urge does exist, time is a major
factor. Most TWs have full workdays, and relish the chance to relax
after work; sometimes, even that is cut down upon by contributing to
mailing lists and other community efforts. That doesn't leave much
time to contribute to FOSS projects :-(

And those are quite as deep as work-related projects; often, you have
to spend quite some time getting the software to run on your computer
so you can begin understanding what it does. Then there are bugs to
file, and possibly even try to fix. And, as you mentioned, you need to
grok source code to figure out some of the app's behavior... putting
in a couple of hours at this per day, moderately-paced people like me
would probably be at it for a couple of months before producing the
output that was needed yesterday - not exactly ideal, huh? :)

I can't help but dream, however - if I win a sweepstakes or something,
I can stop working the daytime job, and actually make some
contribution back into the FOSS community that has helped us so much!

Cheers,
Ed.
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