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> These are, off the top of my head, the things Discord solves: 1) Documentation that requires you to sign up to yet another website. 2) Paying for documentation. 3) Documentation in a PDF that you can’t access until you have a sale calls.

Huh?

Who has ever had to log into something to view documentation? Discord seems to be the only example!

Paying for documentation? Same thing, never had to it, pretty sure businesses don't think this is viable in any way.

As for the last one, well, getting you on to a Discord and into their marketing drip feed is a lot cheaper than having a sales call.



> Paying for documentation? Same thing, never had to it, pretty sure businesses don't think this is viable in any way.

Very normal when working with ICs.


> Paying for documentation? Same thing, never had to it

It was once very common. Microsoft had a "developers club" that basically sold access to their APIs docs.


MSDN sold a service where they mailed you physical CDs. Once they had the documentation on their website it was all free. (A subscription would get you licenses for QAing on different versions of Windows / additional other stuff, but the help files were free)


I used to spend a nickel or two on O'Reilly books, too. Those were effectively "the manual" for a lot of things, once upon a time.




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