Would it be useful for the current discussion of albods or
compound documents or file conglomerations or whatever
we're calling it this half-hour, to have someone organize a
design document that directly addresses what is and isn't
included, what the expected benefits to users and programmers
will be, etc.?
In watching this discussion, I'm seeing a lot of great ideas
flying about, but people seem to be making many assumptions
about what is and isn't desirable in the implementation. I think
that for a change of this magnitude to Linux, it might be helpful
to have some of the decisions and the rationale behind them
documented. If nothing else, it might be a useful experiment to
try to extend the distributed development model to include explicit
requirements definition and/or design processes for more complex
projects.
If the developers want to try this, I'll volunteer to be the document
administrator, and I'll post the doc. on my web site. I'll also want to
contribute to the effort, since I think it's an interesting and important
project, in the form of making suggestions, raising questions, and
helping make sure that the issues people raise get addressed, even
if the answer is "go away, we're not going to bother with that now".
I'll gladly leave the actual design and implementation to the kernel
developers.
(Since I'm relatively new to the list, let me introduce myself. I've
been a programmer for nearly 20 years, including a long stint at
IBM in operating systems design, and I've been a technical writer
in the computer field since 1993. Search the net for "lou grinzo" to
see some of my published work at DDJ and other places.
In case there's any doubt, my sole intention is to contribute to the
project in a meaningful way. This is not connected with any writing
project I'm working on now, although I might want to write about the
experience in the future, if we try this little experiment.)
Lou
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/