Binding developers into writting documentation

Looking at the work done by the BRL-CAD developers to produce a Google backed physical book about contributing to the project I am shocked. It is remarkable just how much effort programmers will put into documentation. The only thing I can see which makes this situation unique is the promise of a printed bound copy if they make the deadlines. I like anything that gets people to make documentation but in a world where everyone seems to be high on ebooks the idea of this level of dedication for paper is just weird. To me it is like they are competing for an audio book version done on vinyl record.

That said I totally want a bound copy and am so jealous of the people who will be receiving them. As a person who has been trying for longer than I care to admit to contribute to gEDA/PCB I really wish they could have participated. This brings me to the elephant in the room. I know Google's backing of BRL-CAD is probably based on their long term plans to use parts of it's code base or poach developer talent. You can tell they have good reasons for picking up some projects and not others unlike the earlier days when google's summer of code seemed to fund every project that applied. Yes they just got smarter about weeding out the projects that were junk/vaporware/impossible but with the programs scale backs I can only imagine they are focused on funding things indirectly useful to their ends.

This brings me back to documentation. If they are this keen on the projects being documented it is because they are interested not just in spotting talent but in the long term viability of the projects. I am not saying that they are distorting the open source scene in a bad way. Far from it. The found a novel way to get people to do the right thing by their work. Just that deserves a big cheer. I just wish I there was more transparency about what if anything motivated them.

I should add just in closing that the BRL-CAD people were producing some stellar documentation before all of this. My issues with contributing to gEDA are mostly my own and not really with gEDA but with PCB. (I have to say gEDA/PCB to refer to PCB because there are too many PCBs on the net)