[FM Discuss] Does FLOSS Manuals hurt other doc efforts?

[Mark]

I think that it is instructive to take a look at the commercial software 
world, specifically Microsoft Outlook. Whether you like Microsoft or 
not, it does believe that the availability of documentation helps 
promote and sell its products. It doesn't seem to think that third party 
documentation hurts the official documentation. If you go to Amazon and 
search for "Outlook email" you get over 700 hits (if you search for 
only "Outlook" you get over 100,000). It certainly benefits MS and its 
customers to have so much documentation available. From a marketing 
point of view, the presence of all this documentation helps prove 
the "dominance" of Outlook in the marketplace and it shows that many 
people think it is something worth knowing about. For users, they can 
choose a guide that meets their specific needs. They don't have to use 
documentation that they may find difficult to use or that they do not 
understand.

In this case, what works for Microsoft would also work for free 
software. It's good for users to have different types and styles of 
documentation to choose from. If someone searches for "Thunderbird 
manual" and gets a list of ten to choose from, she may see that 
Thunderbird is part of the ecosystem that Scott mentioned. She may then 
decide to use Thunderbird because there are more resources to use to 
help resolve problems or answer questions. Once she starts using 
Thunderbird, she may use the FM manual to learn how to perform a task 
and then use the official documentation to understand how to configure 
something. Next, she may tell a friend about Thunderbird and that friend 
may use only the official docs and Google to figure things out. It goes 
on and on. The availability of documentation helps further the use of 
the product and it helps people understand how to better use it.

Finally, I have a question of my own: Do people think that FM hurts 
other documentation efforts by taking technical writers away from 
working on the official documentation? I don't think that this is true 
but I'd like to hear what others think about this.

On 11/17/2010 07:08 AM, Scott Nesbitt wrote:
> This is something that Adam and I have been discussing in a few 
> emails, and now it's time to take the idea to the wider list for comment.
>
> Here's the background: last month, I did a presentation about FLOSS 
> Manuals at the Free Software Open Source Symposium. During the 
> presentation (and a couple of times during the day) people asked me if 
> FLOSS Manuals drives people away from the "official" documentation. I 
> try to explain that one of the goals of FLOSS Manuals is to get people 
> up and running with whatever technology quickly and in a very friendly 
> way. But FMs don't cover everything -- FLOSS Manuals gets you going. 
> If you want to delve deep, deep into the software or technology, the 
> official docs are still there. That seems to get them even more 
> interested.
>
> But that question showed something of a gap in perception, IMO. In my 
> mind, it's not FLOSS Manuals vs. the official documentation or other 
> docs/sources of information. There's not such thing as too much 
> documentation and no one source can be THE source. FM doesn't try to 
> be the last word in documentation. It doesn't answer all the questions 
> or have all the information. The FM should (and usually does) point 
> people to other sources of documentation so they can get a deeper view.
>
> So, what are your thoughts on this? Does FLOSS Manuals hurt, hinder, 
> or put into the shade other documentation efforts? Or are we one big 
> ecosystem, living in something akin to symbiosis (or commensalism)? 
> Let's get some discussion going!
>
> I'm looking forward to your comments. Which, unfortunately, I won't be 
> able to read until this evening (Eastern time) :-)
>
> Scott
>
>
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