Foundation for Open Project Documentation

The Foundation for Open Project Documentation [1] 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,[2][3] Russian Outsourcing and Software Summit 2004[4] and Open Source Forum Russia 2005.[5] Project documentation development approbation in the context of this foundation was made in projects created using Switch-technology, intended for supporting Automata-Based Programming.[6][7]

Anatoly Shalyto on Linux Summit 2004, Helsinki

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 Foundation. 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.

References
  1. Shalyto A.Foundation for Open Project Documentation at Code Project Archived 2006-06-19 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Part of the program of Linux Summit 2004
  3. Shalyto A. Naumov L. Foundation for Open Project Documentation. Presentation for Linux Summit 2004
  4. Fourth Russian Outsourcing and Software Summit
  5. Photos from Open Source Forum Rissua 2005
  6. Projects, created using Switch technology with open project documentation.
  7. Projects, created using UniMod tool with open project documentation.
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