[Xen-users] Push for Better Documentation

[Dylan Martin <dmartin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I recently read this article about how xen isn't turning out to be the
VMware killer we had hoped it would be.  

http://www.interopnews.com/news/desperately-seeking-xen.html

This got me a little worried.  I'd like to stop using VMware and just
use xen, but xen just isn't ready yet.  

I'm convinced that what we really need is better documentation for
the opensource xen.  

The xen user manual is barely a feature list and it doesn't cover 3.0.
The wiki is a shambles with some topics covered, many not, and worst
of all, there's no reasonable organization.  Don't even get me started
about the FAQ... 

Without good documentation, you get fewer users, without users, you
have less contribution, without contribution the product stagnates.  

So, then what are we going to do about it?  

I don't have much time and I'm not a very good writer, but I'm going
to try to spend some time every day improving the opensource xen docs.

I think I'm going to start by combing through the mail archive and
finding out what questions really are most frequently asked and
creating a new FAQ.  If people like it, we could use it to replace the
sad neglected FAQ that we have today.

I'd also like to suggest to Xensource that they spend some
money hiring a real technical writer to improve the opensource docs.
The improved production from the opensource community would probably
cover that cost many times over.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who is trying to improve the xen
docs or who is interested but hasn't yet found the time or anyone
with an opinion about the best ways to make improvements.  

Thanks!
-Dylan

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