As much as we would like to believe code can be self-documenting, in most cases it is not. Having no README file
can make your project more opaque. I probably shouldn't mention this in these parts, but one example of an active project without any README at all is PG's Arc. https://github.com/nex3/arc
I will concede that the Arc project does have a website that covers install instructions, but for new languages where nearly all users are newbies, having no README on GitHub can be an inconvenience.
The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.
Comments
> Force projects to include a good README
As much as we would like to believe code can be self-documenting, in most cases it is not. Having no README file can make your project more opaque. I probably shouldn't mention this in these parts, but one example of an active project without any README at all is PG's Arc. https://github.com/nex3/arc
I will concede that the Arc project does have a website that covers install instructions, but for new languages where nearly all users are newbies, having no README on GitHub can be an inconvenience.
The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.