The Linux Man Page maintainer needs some financial help to maintain the work.

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mitchMurdra@reddit

Is this.. not automated work? I can host it on the nas in the other room if he wants.

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mitchMurdra@reddit

What is that supposed to mean. Is he writing documentation himself or just curating it.

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Nihilii@reddit

No, he's writing documentation for the Linux project. The kernel - syscalls, special files, etc.

This isn't about packaging existing documentation for various software, which is usually done by a distribution's package maintainers for that particular software. But to do that, the documentation has to be, you know, written by someone.

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mitchMurdra@reddit

Ok well that makes more sense. I’d be willing to donate for that to continue.

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Clean-Agent666@reddit

Yeah, kernel syscalls and functions https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/man

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dagbrown@reddit

Writing and maintaining documentation is not automated work, no.

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_-Kr4t0s-_@reddit

Well, damn. I always just assumed that whoever maintains the tool also maintains the man page.

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wRAR_@reddit

This is specifically about the man-pages project, https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

You can look at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/man to see what do they contain.

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starm4nn@reddit

So if I'm reading this correctly, this is the man-pages for the Linux Kernel and related libraries, yeah?

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wRAR_@reddit

It's mostly libc functions and syscalls.

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starm4nn@reddit

For some reason I pictured this being like, the one guy who does the manpages for coreutils. Then I realized that the Linux foundation wouldn't do that.

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wRAR_@reddit

Yeah, manpages for GNU coreutils are maintained by FSF, at least officially.

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wannabelokesh@reddit

Correct me if I'm wrong, are we talking about: man pages about linux? or man command in linux? or man pages websites? or smthng else? I thought they're maintained similar to how pycharm or idea shows goto-definitions or @javadoc or something like that.

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Sarin10@reddit

man pages for kernel stuff

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not_perfect_yet@reddit

How to write documentation or access is a thing I would like to talk about.

I'm not sure man pages are the correct way in 2024, I would like an offline copy of what I am installing, but I don't need or want it to be accessible from the terminal. Or reading a html or something in raw text mode via things like cat or less would be good enough.

So I'm leading in the direction of "eh, I don't use it, I don't need it, if we were doing it from scratch, I'm not sure doing it in the terminal is the best case result we should strive for."

And therefore it shouldn't be done, at all, free or sponsored.

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Sarin10@reddit

You're contradicting yourself.

or something in raw text mode via things like cat or less would be good enough.

I don't need or want it to be accessible from the terminal

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dagbrown@reddit

Are you serious? You're saying that if you personally don't think that man pages are necessary (they are), then nobody should use them and it's not worth any time maintaining them?

What's your proposed improved form of documentation? Be aware that info has been around for decades now and still has yet to catch on outside of official GNU™ projects.

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QuackdocTech@reddit

Now this is something I always took for granted.

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leob0505@reddit

Yup, I’m definitely contributing/donating as well

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NormalSteakDinner@reddit

With the state of the world, it is unreasonable to think that there are still as many people who can devote their time for free. I don't think there is any difference in the number of people who would like to, but there are certainly fewer people who are able to.

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JerryRiceOfOhio2@reddit

agreed. I'm probably soon to be laid off into retirement, I've been wondering what project i can help with, but I only have assembly and python knowledge, so once i am not working, this would be something i could help out with. but until then, yeah, i can't see myself having time for it, and I'm assuming a lot of people are in the same boat

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esuil@reddit

Can someone explain why the only option is to financially sponsor him, and there is no alternative of "someone else maintains it, since I can't anymore"?

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FatStoic@reddit

That is (almost) the option.

He says he can't afford to do the work for free anymore, so either he gets some money or he stops doing it, and perhaps other people will step up.

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GoGaslightYerself@reddit

perhaps other people will step up, perhaps they don't.

Maybe Jia Tan could handle it...? I hear they're looking to contribute their time...

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