(Off Topic ) Open Source: The Model Is Broken ??

[Les Mikesell]

M. Fioretti wrote:

>> So, my advice is "just do it".  someone will fix it.
> 
> Here I could simply answer "after you, please" or repeat what I wrote
> above: we're talking about quality, not quantity. But I have a very
> fresh, real world example of somebody who "just did it" and things
> didn't go as you say, so I'll let that speak for itself. Have a look
> to the thread about Postfix How-tos starting at
> http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2008-12/0133.html

There is a problem peculiar to the free/open source world in that poor 
quality versions of things have no reason to ever go away.  That takes 
care of itself in the commercial versions where there is a cost to 
maintain them and when the value no longer covers the cost they will die 
gracefully and disappear.   I don't have a solution for this - it is 
just an observation that if anyone ever releases bad documentation or 
even advice, others will be finding and following it years later via 
google and other archives.

> the thread summary is:
> 
> - postfix gurus only wrote good, but too difficult docs
> - some popular postfix howtos (by other people who "just did them")
>   are broken
> - newbies read **those** docs only, as the "official" ones are too
>   difficult
> - they make mistakes following those docs, ask how to fix them to the
>   postfix list. This happens several times a year.
> - every time, postfix gurus answer "those docs are broken, check the
>   official docs"
> - for any number of reasons, postfix gurus have no plan to write better
>   howtos themselves
> - nobody but postfix gurus could write better howtos than those
>   already available, or fix those ones. Excepted a good technical
>   writer **paid** enough to spend on the subject lots of time, since
>   it isn't an easy task by any means.

I have a different take on this.  Complex programs like postfix have 
(and need) thousands of options to cover every possible case.  However, 
there are probably less than a dozen mail server configurations that 
anyone who is not already an expert should try to implement.  Rather 
than confuse people who should be just following standards with the 
thousands of options they shouldn't touch anyway, we need a dozen 
templates for this sort of program and something that makes it easy to 
adapt any needed local settings without breaking the template-provided 
program operation settings.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com