I would have thought that was obvious: it's the possibility of having a Beowulf cluster of keyboards.

In the case of my configuration-file parser, a new user just needs to open the Getting Started manual and read two short chapters: Overview of Config4* syntax and Overview of the Config4* API. I would be surprised if doing that would take more than 30 minutes. And having done that, it would then take the new user about 5 minutes to write working code.

There is an old joke: "The definition of promiscuous is somebody who has more sex than you do". From reading TFA and some of the comments on slashdot, I get the feeling that the definition of documentation is equally subjective and self-serving for developers. Some developers think that writing documentation means adding comments to code. Others feel it involves writing Javadoc/Doxygen-style comments at the start of every class and method, and then generating HTML from that. Yet others feel that documentation hasn't been written unless it involves an architectural description.

When I am working on my own open-source projects, I feel that documentation isn't complete until I have written a few hundred pages of text that aim to be cover most/all of the following: (1) API reference guide, (2) programming tutorial, (3) user guide, (4) architectural guide, and (5) suggestions for "future work" that I hope other people will volunteer to do. Yes, I recognise that I am a bit extreme in the amount of effort I put into writing documentation. However, it does enable me to elaborate on the thesis of TFA: attempting to write such a comprehensive amount of documentation often highlights not just coding bugs, but also architectural flaws. This causes me to work in an iterative manner. I implement a first draft version of the code. Then I start documenting it, and when I encounter a part of the software that is difficult to explain, I realise that I need to re-architect the code base a bit. So I do that, and then get back to writing documentation, which causes me to notice another difficult-to-explain issue with the code. Working in this manner is slow, and I suspect it wouldn't work in a business with time-to-market pressures, but I find it gives excellent results in my own, non-time-pressured open-source projects. I touched on this issue in the documentation for one of my open-source projects.

I don't drink alcohol because I have some sort of allergy or intolerance to it. As a teenager and young adult, I tried socialising with friends in bars. They would drink alcohol while I drank a soda or water. Eventually I gave up trying to socialise in such places. It boiled down to something somebody one said to me: "Those who are sober don't make good company for those who aren't. And vice versa."

I also have concerns about the Creative Commons set of licenses.

First, four of the six Creative Commons licenses are not "open source" since they prohibit modification and/or commercial use. There is nothing wrong with that per se; my gripe is that Creative Commons seem happy to let people assume that their licenses are open source.

Second, Creative Commons do not provide txt/Word/RTF/LaTeX/whatever versions of their licenses that you can download and embed into a book you are writing. Instead, the copyright page of your book is supposed to just tell readers that they can find the text of the license on a website or by writing to a specific postal address. So what happens if: (1) the Creative Commons organisation's postal address changes, and (2) they forget to renew their domain name and a cyber squatter buys it and holds it to ransom for millions of dollars? (More realistically, what happens if in, say, 20 years time, the Creative Commons organisation goes bankrupt and shuts down operations.) Now the license page of your book tells readers that it is licensed under terms that they cannot verify.

Third, the Creative Commons have gone through 5 versions of licenses (1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5 and 3.0) in just over 4 years and (as far as I know) there is no forwards or backwards compatibility between the different versions.

You can find the answer to your question in the final two paragraphs of the first link in the /. summary. I'd like to quote those two paragraphs for your convenience. But then, according to the thrust of the article, I might be sued for copyright infringement.

The article written by Adrian Hands' son states, "Adrian Hands loved free software / open source." This means Mr Hands spent the last few weeks of his life working on something he loved, and which happened to be of benefit to others. Off hand, I can't think of a better, more important way for a person to spend the last few weeks of their life. Sure, you might say that he could have spent some time talking to loved ones. But who says he didn't do that too?

That is untrue, and the newspaper article you cited when asked for a source is incorrect. The woman did write a blog article that offered advice on how to get revenge, but the blog article did not suggest using (or abusing) the legal system to do so.

Read an English translation of the blog article if you want to check.

That particular "fun fact" is incorrect. Woman A's blog article did not state anything at all about using the legal system.

The newspaper article was very misleading in its characterisation of the blog posting. The only occurrence of "legal" (or any related word) was in the title of the blog article, and that should be read as "7 steps to taking revenge without breaking the law" rather than as "7 steps to taking revenge by talking legal action". The blog posting did not suggest using the courts to get revenge.

The very first step in the blog article stated: "It is almost always better to forgive than to avenge".

Steps 3 and 7 in the blog article suggest that the form of revenge you take should be similar to and in proportion to how you feel you have been wronged.

To characterise the blog article as a recipe for how to bring false accusations of rape against a person is incorrect.

For anyone who is interested, here is a translation of the blog article.

It is clear to me that inaccuracies in the media and on the Internet are demonising not just the accused but also (at least one of) his accusers.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how the Seven step model for legal revenge blog article supports the claim that she "has been outspoken about how women should use rape accusations to destroy men".

First, the blog article does not mention rape accusations at all.

Second, the blog article advises that, "It is almost always better to forgive than to revenge".

Third, the blog article advises that if you do decide to revenge rather than forgive, then the revenge should not be disproportionately excessive.

Can you elaborate on how you think this blog article supports the claim?

That reminds me of an old piece of graffiti: I used to want to be an engineer. Now I are one.

True. But Gandhi also trained some (I think a few dozen) of his followers in his tactics, and sent them off to various villages to carry his message. Typically, such a follower would work hard to become a respected member of the village. Later, if a serious disputes arose in the village, then the person might go on hunger strike until the dispute was resolved. According to one of Gandhi's biographies, such hunger strikes were successful in ending disputes, at least in some cases.

I think this shows that a person who is respected nationally can go on hunger strike and have a national impact, while a person who is respected more locally can go on a hunger strike and have a local impact.

Whether locally, nationally or internationally known, a hunger strike is much more likely to be effective if there is widespread publicity about it. The fact that the Chinese people on hunger strike against Google have gotten international exposure will certainly help their chances of success.