At 06:16 PM 8/30/2005, Gerald Youngblood wrote:
To my knowledge we have NEVER promised source code documentation. We might do it some day but no promises. By the way we sincerely appreciate ALL of you who have in the past contributed and will in the future contribute to the open source development. 73, Gerald K5SDR
I'd like to make it clear that I don't and didn't expect software documentation from Flex-Radio. I bought the radios for the hardware. I used the software mostly to make sure the radios weren't broken. If I could have used the software beyond that (which would have depended on documentation) it would have been a bonus. I think the general ham community would have a somewhat different take on it, based on a history of relatively well documented hardware, in the form of readily available service manuals and the like.
However, my comment was more addressed to developers of the software. Basic documentation will make it a realistic goal to get multiple contributions to the free codebase. Otherwise it will remain an interesting toy for the technically persistent and skilled software artists with plenty of paid or unpaid time to spend on it.
Open software development is just that: OPEN. Put your stuff out there and people get to shoot at it, and from the shooting (and the response thereto) comes better products. If the complaint is that modifications are difficult because there's no documentation, that's a valid complaint. As a developer, you get to decide whether you agree. You can say, nope, it's good enough for me, and I'd rather spend my time on a new feature, or, equally valid, you can say, you're right, it should be better, because my goal is providing a platform for development for others to build on. De gustibus non disputandum. (or, as RMS puts it, free as in speech, not as in beer.)
My plea was not intended to convince Flex-Radio to change their ways, but more to the software development community that has sprung up around the hardware platform. I didn't think that what I asked for was particularly expensive or tedious (normal software development processes produce this sort of documentation in the process of doing the job anyway), and the whole GPL thing is more of a cautionary comment for the future direction, and a desire to avoid locking yourself into a path that might have an undesirable endpoint. As far as I know, nobody is advocating trying to privatize GPLed code. On the other hand, you shouldn't be excluding non-GPL participants from the party.
While I think that open rants on open software are fair game, I reserve the right to rant privately to Flex-Radio about how they should run their company <grin>. Clearly, they should build radios that suit me, particularly, with the interfaces that I want, and bollocks to the rest of you lot.<grin>
Jim, W6RMK
