Fwd: PDF Distribution: Packaging with Product versus Internet Access

[Joseph Lorenzini]

Hi all,

I publish hundreds of pages of documentation using FrameMaker. I also use
Robohelp to generate help systems.

Does anyone know of IT companies that ONLY distribute documents about their
products via the internet and are NO longer distributing documentation by
installing it with the product? Off the top of my head, I believe Microsoft
and Adobe do this with some of their products.

For a variety of reasons, I am considering moving away from bundling
documents with the software's installation package and instead only
distributing the docs via a internet portal. If I did this, I would no
longer be at the mercy of the engineering team's agile development life
cycle.  This means I would 1) have significantly more time to document
features 2) the code is frozen so features will always be completed by the
time I start documenting them and out of date screenshots would be a thing
of the past and 3) SMEs would have more time to review my documents.

However, to make this sell to project management, I need some evidence that
other IT companies are ONLY distributing documents via the internet and are
NO longer distributing documentation by installing it with the product.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lorenzini