Expanding the open source business model

How much would you pay for some really good open source documentation?

It's an important question. As a business model, we have seen that open source can pay for programming and support services. But technical writing lags.

Good instruction is a multi-part process. It starts with basic documentation, a description of what the program is doing. When this is sound, as in a well-written requirements document, development is much smoother.

But getting this sort of document out of a programmer is a bit like trying to get a teenager with ADD to clean their desk. You're in for a fight, the result will never be what you want, and within hours there's going to be another mess.

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