[phpGroupWare-docteam] Great software can be worthless without documentation

[Stuart]

The current status of the documentation makes phpGroupWare virtually unusable.  
There's enough documentation to get it installed, but (with limited exceptions) 
that seems to be where it ends.  At the very minimum, there should be a concise 
list of what each application is and whether it is required for basic 
functionality or not.

I looked at the application suite some time ago and the "application list" 
indicated that the list was being developed.  I returned this week, many months 
after initially trying it, and nothing has changed!

There isn't even consistent naming of a documentation directory within each 
application -- sometimes it's "doc" other times "docs."  The contents are often 
so minimal that my only clue to the functionality of an application is its 
name.  Plus, it appears that core functionality and optional functionality are 
both treated as "applications" which adds to the confusion (and is an illogical 
structure in general).

Once again, I'm going to uninstall phpGroupWare.  The difference this time is 
that I'm not going to ever try it again.  As the saying goes, fool me once, 
shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.  I've been fooled twice -- and I'm 
very unhappy about it.

The unfortunate thing is that I believe there is probably some good 
functionality amidst the bloat (sorry, there's no other way to refer to the 
chaotic [and, to some extent, apparently-redundant] set of applications), but 
there's no efficient way to ever actually see the value, to get a 
cleanly-configured system. Sure, I could just leave everything in place, which 
is a flagrant violation of basic security practices, but that's not how I 
administer my systems.

I'm sure the standard answer is that if I want to contribute, I'm welcome to do 
so.  As far gone as this is, with vast amounts of undocumented functionality, 
it would take far too long just to get the basics down to a point where I could 
add value, and I just don't have that kind of time.  This is unfortunate, as 
I've done a fair amount of such writing in the past, and would have been 
willing to help if I wasn't essentially starting from square one.

IMHO, the only way to resolve this is to immediately dump all the applications 
except a very core set.  Then provide basic documentation for that core set, 
and not let any more applications be added back in without documentation.

As an example of open source, this is a disgrace.  It shows the worst side of 
open source -- programmers who develop what they think will be useful but can't 
be bothered to document it for anybody else.  When I was first getting into 
programming 20+ years ago, and I heard the warning about improper or missing 
documentation, I never thought I'd see such an awful example of the results.  
I've seen a lot of code, a lot of documentation, and a lot of systems large and 
small since then, and phpGroupWare is amongst the worst I've seen.

If I thought the functionality itself was worthless, I might not care about the 
documentation.  But teasing people with useful functionality and stealing away 
any effective chance of using it due to bad/missing documentation...   well...
:x 
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