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RE: Why Tech-Writers Should Know About Open Source Technologies
Subject:RE: Why Tech-Writers Should Know About Open Source Technologies From:Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axion -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:09:59 -0700
On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 12:44 -0400, Doug Grossman wrote:
>
> I've never had to spend any time installing Microsoft Office. I work for a software company, and of course they take care of all of those installations. I've also never had to contact Microsoft technical support (for business purposes). We have very professional and expert help desk support for anything like that.
That's exactly my point.
But even if you were a contractor, it wouldn't be much different. Most
of the tools you would need as a technical writer would be installed
with the operating system. If you needed anything else, you could
download and install them in less than five minutes in most cases.
Similarly, a professional should have no trouble picking up
OpenOffice.org for manual writing or the GIMP for image editing without
any outside help. And, if you did need help, in my experience, open
source mailing lists provide faster, more thorough help than most paid
technical support.
In other words, installation, support and administration are no more
issues for open source software than they are for proprietary software.
In several ways, they may be less.
The idea that these are special problems is about seven years out of
date. Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours researching an
article by haning out at a local library talking to people about their
experiences using open source software on the computers that the library
provides. Their problems were much the same as they would have been on
Windows computers. Two-thirds of them didn't even know that they were
using Linux.
"When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp
right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is
not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result
is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending
to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it.'
- Mark Twain
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