On Thu, Dec 02, 1999, Ilya Konstantinov wrote about "Re: Lack of enthusiasm":
> What's a member of the ILUG basically? One who's reading the mailing
> list.
> Now, who without very much interest, whiling (able) to help other people
> and having efficient mail sorting system (IMAP + exim filters on server,
> in my case) would flood his/her mailbox off with our mailing list?
> I remember myself subscribing the list about a year and a half ago
> (when I had much less experience), using POP3 mail, and then
> unsubscribing
> just as fast.
I have to admit the exact same experience happened to me - several years
ago, when I didn't have a mail filtering program, I subscribed to linux-il,
and quickly unsubscribed from it when it overwhelmed my mailbox (and,
admittingly, many of the messages did not interest me directly). Only a
few months ago, when I wanted to start the Ivrix project, and already had
a mail filtering system in place (procmail+rblcheck+many lines of code and
configuration I wrote), I subscribed again to the mailing list.
Currently, about 30% of the email I get comes from linux-il (paralleled only
by the amount of mail I get from bugtraq), but I don't mind because it all
automatically goes into a seperate folder.
But most people don't write 800 lines of configuration code for a mail
filtering system, or have any filtering system at all, for that matter.
Perhaps in order to get a broader audience linux-il should move to a
newsgroup, like israel.comp.os.linux, israel.ilug, or whatever ?
Such a move also has it's downsides, such as less feeling of "membership", but
this downside is also a bonus of people who want to hear about Linux without
committing themselves to daily bomardment of email, some of it about ancient
castles for sale :)
[as Monty Python say]
And now for something completely different:
I was at Infotech today, and attended some of the Linux sessions, and it was
clear that one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the way of Linux success
in Israel (beside the obvious ones that apply also in the US, like lack of
drivers and applications) is the lack of Hebrew support. This is also the
biggest complaint I hear from MS-Windows users, together with the difficulty
of installation (I still didn't try to install Redhat 6.1 - did they improve
anything in that respect?). To allow Linux to become popular in Israel, we
need a "hebrew-enabled" distribution, much like Microsoft's Hebrew-Enabled
Windows, or maybe a Hebrew-Enabling patch set that works for various
distributions (Redhat, Debian, etc.), so that we don't get "locked" on to
one distribution.
As most of you probably already know, I wanted to improve the Hebrew situation
by starting the Ivrix project (www.ivrix.org.il). People are very interested
in the project (about 80 people registered as members), but so far we (as a
group) haven't done much except talk (we have 3 mailing lists especially for
that), and lately even the talk has been rare. Some people (like Dov Grobgeld,
for example) are still actively developing real Hebrew support code, and some
have good ideas (like adding logical-hebrew support to Mozilla), but still
development is very slow and its organization is almost nonexistant - which
is why I thought a project like Ivrix was needed. I would value very much
any comments on how the Ivrix hebrew-enabling project should be pushed
forward - please direct them to this list, to me, or to the ivrix-discuss
mailing list.
And a plea: if any of you out there have free time and were considering
programming free software - please consider the area of Hebrew support for
existing libraries, applications, and so on. This will have an enormous impact
on the Israeli Linux community, and will make you a local Linux guru :)
Remember - Linux will *never* succeed in Israel without good Hebrew support!
--
Nadav Har'El | Friday, Dec 3 1999, 24 Kislev 5760
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I am logged in, therefore I am.
http://nadav.harel.org.il |
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