Internet giants Google run a Summer of Code programme, in which ‘students’ each work on an open-source project, guided by mentors from their selected project. It’s a fantastic idea with good momentum and hype behind it; 3,400 students in nearly 100 countries have been accepted since its 2005 inception.

On the back of this, an article recently asked where the “Summer of Documentation” was; this gave me an idea. My favourite lightweight Linux distribution, SliTaz, is a young but already-excellent product, but is in need of a little TLC. @jpeg recently posted on the SliTaz Forum that the handbook and cookbook have not seen quite as much attention as they deserve, especially with the release of the latest SliTaz 3. I’ve advised developers in a previous post to shout out how great their efforts are with (better?) documentation; SliTaz deserves to show the world how simple and easy-to-use/fix it really is and I think this is a perfect way to do it.

So… :-)

I propose a period of time this summer, say a fortnight to a month, where a group of us focus on the SliTaz documentation to ensure it is of as high quality as SliTaz itself. This sprint can be carried out by the community, without needing developers to track issues and bug-fixes raised, as is the case in providing support on the forum.

I envisage the process involving a couple of wiki pages, in which we discuss which articles could be written - from FAQs to technical package details. (The mailing list could further discussions, but that’s not quite as open and used to be really productive; similarly the forum is a bit of a mish-mash of support and discussions.) Each could be taken up by one or more members of the community and the actual contents outlined. This will ensure that nothing is repeated (unnecessarily?) but, more importantly, everything is covered and we have substantial, useful documentation.

Do you have some spare time in which you could help with this impressive project? Could you give even an outsiders’ view to the docs sprint; is there anything we’re missing? Please don’t hesitate to give me or any of the contributors a message of advice!

I mirrored this post on the SliTaz Community, and have received some very useful and encouraging feedback from members. A big thank-you goes out to everyone involved in the project! I highly recommend you trying out this up-and-coming (if not already there!) project to see what all the fuss is about!