Foundation for Open Project Documentation
Encyclopedia
The Foundation for Open Project Documentation
is an organization. Its main idea is to create detailed and public documentation for all stages of software creation. The foundation was established in 2002 on the grand opening of the semifinals of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
in Saint Petersburg
by Anatoly Shalyto
. This foundation was announced on the Linux Summit 2004, Russian Outsourcing and Software Summit 2004 and Open Source Forum Russia 2005. Project documentation development approbation in the context of this foundation was made in projects created using Switch-technology, intended for supporting Automata-Based Programming
.
The motivation for making documentation open is considered the following:
. OpenDoc project can also be commercial.
is an organization. Its main idea is to create detailed and public documentation for all stages of software creation. The foundation was established in 2002 on the grand opening of the semifinals of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is an annual multi-tiered computer programming competition among the universities of the world. The contest is sponsored by IBM. Headquartered at Baylor University, with autonomous regions on six continents, the ICPC is directed by Baylor Professor...
in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
by Anatoly Shalyto
Anatoly Shalyto
Anatoly Abramovich Shalyto is a Russian scientist, doctor of sciences, professor, awarded by Russian State Government in 2008 for achievements in education, developer of technology for Automata-based programming named "Switch-technology", initiator of and of ....
. This foundation was announced on the Linux Summit 2004, Russian Outsourcing and Software Summit 2004 and Open Source Forum Russia 2005. Project documentation development approbation in the context of this foundation was made in projects created using Switch-technology, intended for supporting Automata-Based Programming
Automata-Based Programming
Automata-based programming is a programming paradigm in which the program or its part is thought of as a model of a finite state machine or any other formal automaton...
.
Motivation
The motivation for creating detailed documentation is considered the following:- software quality increases
- program verification simplifies
- project modification becomes easier and safer
The motivation for making documentation open is considered the following:
- project becomes less dependent on its initial authors
- other people can easily understand structure and behaviour of a program
- design decisions reuse becomes easier and safer
- it becomes possible to use real project for study purposes
Application
Foundation for Open Project Documentation gives a project a greater understandability and re-usability potential, than Open Source foundation. It is loosely connected with Free Software FoundationFree Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
. OpenDoc project can also be commercial.
Main principles
- The project documentation should be a base for source code, but not vice versa.
- The documentation should describe not only the final product, but also the creation process.
- The documentation should be easy to understand even for less qualified developers than its author.
- The documentation should be available every time anyone explores or modifies a project.