Re: sample DB_CONFIG bdb backend docs : a must in faq-o-matic

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Trevor Warren wrote:

> --- Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com> wrote:
>
> > Relying on 2nd or 3rd hand documentation of this
> > form is both foolish 
> > and dangerous.
>
> [snip]
>
>   Yep, easy to easy howard and a lot of hard work to
> achieve. A lot of work on the documentation wrt
> performance/tuning/scalability is still required as
> part of the standard openldap doc online.
>
>   If someone else does provide the same......its
> welcome. And expecting everyone to come bowing to us
> to clarify their stand isn't quite logical.

>   We shall do our part and so shall the rest howard.
> Towards preventing such *disservice* in your words we
> have to pull up our own documentation/guidelines and
> have them all such that one ain't have to drool at
> documentation hosted by others. 
>
>   Even if they need to i think its healthy, after all
> we all are part of the same movement...FLOSS they say.
>
> Trevor

The documentation is obviously equally essential to the OpenLDAP project 
as the code itself. Why is it that you feel it's acceptable to rely on a 
small group of developers to write the code for you, but you feel it's 
OK to have your own documentation? The community knows that the code 
comes from one place. Why should the documentation be scattered all over 
the web? If the documentation you (collectively) write is useful, why 
don't you submit it back to the project, the same as a bug report or 
code patch, so that it can immediately become useful to everyone else?

An open souce code project succeeds partially because the code is 
peer-reviewed by a large number of developers who are skilled in the art 
and/or skilled in the topic area. This helps to ensure a good quality of 
code, with no security holes or other faulty logic. Why wouldn't you 
submit your documentation to the same standard of review? Why would you 
trust documentation that was written or reviewed by people who are not 
skilled in the topic area? It makes no sense.

Code or documentation that's squirreled away in someone's private corner 
of the web does not benefit the OpenLDAP community. Code only benefits 
people when it makes its way into the OpenLDAP ITS, so that other 
developers can review it, revise it, and incorporate it into the main 
distribution. Why do you expect the documentation to be any different?
--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support