[FM Discuss] Tech writers and FLOSS (was Re: DocTrain Report)

[Janet Swisher]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:44 PM, Anne Gentle
<annegentle at justwriteclick.com> wrote:
> I'm in agreement with all of Janet's previous comments - especially
> revealing is the "what companies pay tech writers to do" reveals their
> current interests. So the TW is not always at fault for the slowness in
> uptake of more open, collaborative, modular publishing and authoring
> techniques. I think that most technical writers get their priorities set by
> their current employer...

BTW, I think my use of the word "backwater" may have been a bit too
harsh. If your employer makes mechanical hardware, then writing books
in FrameMaker is all you've ever needed to do, and websites and user
groups are the purview of the marketing and sales departments. But
then one day that hardware gets a chip embedded into it, with a
software interface, and BAM! you're in a whole new scary world.

> I'm not sure how or whether to refute the assertion that many technical
> writers are feeding a fiction writing habit. I hear that over and over yet
> have only met two in person (out of at least 200 people on my LinkedIn
> contacts) who even think they stand a chance of being a fiction writer - but
> yes, they both are participating in nanowrimo. :)

Well, I left that "fraction" vague for a reason :-) But I know one
published author who is a tech writer, and a few others by reputation.
And, fiction or no, a fairly common reaction I've gotten when talking
to tech writers about open source is "I do that all day -- why would I
want to do it in my spare time?" The kind of passion that seems to
drive open source programmers seems much less common among tech
writers.

--Janet