Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi Norbert, Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2012-05-30 17:37: Just to be clear: It is not my position that we should be excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. oh, no, don't get me wrong - didn't want to put words in your mouths. :-) Just summed things up, exaggerating a bit, to make my point clear. But, as far as communication with the MC, for membership purpose, I do not want to put the burden on the MC to find translator to be able to handle request in any languages. I see it similar - the main and primary language of the MC, for internal as well as external communication should be English, and it's not the MC's duty to find translators. Of course, looking at the current composition of the MC, we have members inside who speak German, Dutch and French at least, so if they would volunteer to act as gateway, that would be appreciated. Of course, I know you all are busy as many active TDF members, so getting in externals for that task is also worthwile. I would suggest that the burden to find such proxy is on the applicant... and that is actually an exhibit of proper interaction with the community. Agreed. I think practically, we can do it similar to the statutes. The official form and rules are in English, but for convenience, we can provide localized versions, given we find volunteers to translate them. The binding variants, however, should solely be the English ones then (except for legal texts, but that's another topic I don't want to touch here...). Agreed, but without exception :-) :-) Florian -- Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi All, 2012/5/31 Florian Effenberger flo...@documentfoundation.org Hi Norbert, Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2012-05-30 17:37: Just to be clear: It is not my position that we should be excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. oh, no, don't get me wrong - didn't want to put words in your mouths. :-) Just summed things up, exaggerating a bit, to make my point clear. But, as far as communication with the MC, for membership purpose, I do not want to put the burden on the MC to find translator to be able to handle request in any languages. I see it similar - the main and primary language of the MC, for internal as well as external communication should be English, and it's not the MC's duty to find translators. Of course, looking at the current composition of the MC, we have members inside who speak German, Dutch and French at least, so if they would volunteer to act as gateway, that would be appreciated. Of course, I know you all are busy as many active TDF members, so getting in externals for that task is also worthwile. If the MC need help to translation, I think I can help, 'cause I have knowledge in some languages. I already had offered my help in another situation and I offer again, if the MC wishes. Best, David I would suggest that the burden to find such proxy is on the applicant... and that is actually an exhibit of proper interaction with the community. Agreed. I think practically, we can do it similar to the statutes. The official form and rules are in English, but for convenience, we can provide localized versions, given we find volunteers to translate them. The binding variants, however, should solely be the English ones then (except for legal texts, but that's another topic I don't want to touch here...). Agreed, but without exception :-) :-) Florian -- Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:55 AM, David Emmerich Jourdain jourd...@gmx.de wrote: If the MC need help to translation, I think I can help, 'cause I have knowledge in some languages. I already had offered my help in another situation and I offer again, if the MC wishes. As I said earlier, that should not emanate from the MC What you are welcomed to do is to work within the community to let them know that you can help them interact in English with the MC if they need it. Doing so will help the MC and also that means that you would probably have a better understanding of who the candidate are and what they did, so the MC can ping you for clarification if need be. The other thing, which is not MC-related, is to make sure that the statues are translated and available... on the Wiki I supposed would be a nice place for them... Norbert
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi all, On 31/05/2012 14:10, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hi Norbert, Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2012-05-30 17:37: Just to be clear: It is not my position that we should be excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. oh, no, don't get me wrong - didn't want to put words in your mouths. :-) Just summed things up, exaggerating a bit, to make my point clear. But, as far as communication with the MC, for membership purpose, I do not want to put the burden on the MC to find translator to be able to handle request in any languages. I see it similar - the main and primary language of the MC, for internal as well as external communication should be English, and it's not the MC's duty to find translators. Of course, looking at the current composition of the MC, we have members inside who speak German, Dutch and French at least, so if they would volunteer to act as gateway, that would be appreciated. Of course, I know you all are busy as many active TDF members, so getting in externals for that task is also worthwile. I would suggest that the burden to find such proxy is on the applicant... and that is actually an exhibit of proper interaction with the community. Agreed. I think you didn't get me right. The purpose of the language communities is to provide information about the overall project and help all the members, whatever the language, feel at home and happy to participate and contribute. There is no burden on any sides, it's inside the language communities that the exchange and help should take place to bridge with the other parts, should it be the MC, the board, the documentation or the design part. What we need is some abilities to provide localization (like in QA or on the wiki) in order to inform and attract a large variety of members, but if the communication goes well, membership committee will never be concerned by translating applications. Again, that's exactly the purpose and the aim of the language communities. Kind regards Sophie
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi, sophie wrote on 2012-05-31 17:23: What we need is some abilities to provide localization (like in QA or on the wiki) in order to inform and attract a large variety of members, but if the communication goes well, membership committee will never be concerned by translating applications. Again, that's exactly the purpose and the aim of the language communities. isn't that what I proposed? :-) Florian -- Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hello, I would like to second Charles' thoughts. While the legal authority language is German, as we are based in Germany, the main language of correspondence inside the BoD's bodies, and also towards our members, is English, since that's the lowest common denominator most of us share, and it makes reviewing, archiving and reading decisions and minutes much easier, also for the following MC and BoD. However, most of us is not all of us, and indeed it is one of our strenghts that we have a wide, open and diverse community, active in many countries and on many languages. I really feel uncomfortable excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. While of course the main language of the MC should be English, finding ways of having proxies, people helping to translate, would be very much welcome. I think practically, we can do it similar to the statutes. The official form and rules are in English, but for convenience, we can provide localized versions, given we find volunteers to translate them. The binding variants, however, should solely be the English ones then (except for legal texts, but that's another topic I don't want to touch here...). Florian -- Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Florian Effenberger flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote: Hello, However, most of us is not all of us, and indeed it is one of our strenghts that we have a wide, open and diverse community, active in many countries and on many languages. I really feel uncomfortable excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. Just to be clear: It is not my position that we should be excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because they don't speak English. But, as far as communication with the MC, for membership purpose, I do not want to put the burden on the MC to find translator to be able to handle request in any languages. Presumably someone, who does not speak English, must be active and interacting with other local people, and surely at least one of them must speak enough English to help them fill the form properly, and decode the answer they receive from the MC. While of course the main language of the MC should be English, finding ways of having proxies, people helping to translate, would be very much welcome. I would suggest that the burden to find such proxy is on the applicant... and that is actually an exhibit of proper interaction with the community. I think practically, we can do it similar to the statutes. The official form and rules are in English, but for convenience, we can provide localized versions, given we find volunteers to translate them. The binding variants, however, should solely be the English ones then (except for legal texts, but that's another topic I don't want to touch here...). Agreed, but without exception :-) Norbert
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
On Tue, 2012-05-22 at 08:25 -0500, Norbert Thiebaud wrote: On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:36 AM, sophie gautier.sop...@gmail.com wrote: This is what language communities are supposed to do : give those who don't speak English a chance to be part of the project. We can't rely only on English speaking people to grow the community and represent it every where in the world. This is why settling each of our actions on an i18n point of view first is very important. That conjure to me the following quote (from a brazillian TDF member on the aooo-dev ML) 4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called a contributor should fill a agreement request in order to be recognized. So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of channels, many of them obscured. 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them didn't vote for him. Which, to me, indicate that the language barrier is being use and abuse to mislead (*), and the underlying 'nationalism' is disturbing to me. the notion the TDF should be the UN with 'national representative' is pretty scary (**) :-( Hi Norbert I think you make too much of the statement from one person. Some people will leave in a huff, no matter what policies are in place. I also think that what you refer to as a problem with Nationalism is not, rather it is a problem with external organizations, and the relationship between them and TDF. No place is this more true, currently then in Brazil, but it is not exclusive to Brazil. It is true that these secondary (from the TDF perspective) organizations are predominantly defined, partly, by location and therefore Nation. //drew (*) TDF does not _require_ anything to 'contribute'. for code contribution we ask for the proper licensing... but that is true of nay project. member need to be contributors but contributors are not required to be member. For instance last time I checked Tor is not a member, yet he is undeniably a contributor. Sure, to become a member, one is asked to agree to the tenet of the organization one want to become a member of... nothing shocking about that... (**) the notion of 'brazillian' member is shocking to me, just like the notion of 'French' member or 'Finnish' member... a member is a member, his national origin is irrelevant. And voting for a BoD member based on such irrelevant criteria is disturbing to me.
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 5:59 AM, drew jensen drewjensen.in...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2012-05-22 at 08:25 -0500, Norbert Thiebaud wrote: On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:36 AM, sophie gautier.sop...@gmail.com wrote: This is what language communities are supposed to do : give those who don't speak English a chance to be part of the project. We can't rely only on English speaking people to grow the community and represent it every where in the world. This is why settling each of our actions on an i18n point of view first is very important. That conjure to me the following quote (from a brazillian TDF member on the aooo-dev ML) 4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called a contributor should fill a agreement request in order to be recognized. So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of channels, many of them obscured. 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them didn't vote for him. Which, to me, indicate that the language barrier is being use and abuse to mislead (*), and the underlying 'nationalism' is disturbing to me. the notion the TDF should be the UN with 'national representative' is pretty scary (**) :-( Hi Norbert I think you make too much of the statement from one person. Some people will leave in a huff, no matter what policies are in place. Drew, I quoted the statement above not for the specific of the case but for its illustration value: I also think that what you refer to as a problem with Nationalism is not, let me narrow the quote: One of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them didn't vote for him. isn't the author arguing that a BoD candidat that happen to have nationality X must have the majority support of the members that also share that irrelevant trait. and reciprocally, isn't the author complaining that the artificial (in our context) subgroup defined by that irrelevant criteria is not properly represented as such ? Considering that the irrelevant criteria in question is 'National Origin', how is Nationalism not an accurate description ? Maybe 'Chauvinism' ? To go back to the original issue: 1/ I have no problem with TDF developing alternative way to 'recognize' people. But that is more a Internal Marketing/Community Management topic than a MC topic. 2/ Volunteer can translate and help people that do not know any English, including our Statue/Bylaw and other Foundation related document, actually I'd encourage that, as it would help avoid some confusion, apparently. 3/ I have a practical problem receiving Application/Renewal request in anything but English. English is _not_ my native language, but that is a practical, and relatively simple(*), working language. And as much as I would like to, I cannot be expected to speak all the language of the planet, nor is any MC member. So, official/formal communication, like membership application and renewal, must practically be en English. I'm very open to review and correction so that we avoid Idioms and other complex formulation is such documents, but it shall still be in English nonetheless. (*)I've dabbled with few languages, by curiosity... I took German and Latin in middle school, I did a short stint of Spanish.. I even glanced at Russian, Japanese and Chinese... English, as it turns out if a pretty simple language. Very little grammar, almost no conjugation, no declination, fairly limited vocabulary... as a consequence it is fairly easy - compared to other languages - to reach a level that allow written communication. Norbert
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi Norbert, Norbert Thiebaud wrote (23-05-12 16:47) To go back to the original issue: Hé, that was mine ;-) 1/ I have no problem with TDF developing alternative way to 'recognize' people. But that is more a Internal Marketing/Community Management topic than a MC topic. My idea is the other way round: give people other ways to 'recognise' TDF. Usually people see becoming a member as an act of supporting. I would love to see that people, that can not (at a time) be, or do not want to be member, can become supporter or something. 2/ Volunteer can translate and help people that do not know any English, including our Statue/Bylaw and other Foundation related document, actually I'd encourage that, as it would help avoid some confusion, apparently. OK. 3/ I have a practical problem receiving Application/Renewal request in anything but English. English is _not_ my native language, but that is a practical, and relatively simple(*), working language. And as much as I would like to, I cannot be expected to speak all the language of the planet, nor is any MC member. So, official/formal communication, like membership application and renewal, must practically be en English. I'm very open to review and correction so that we avoid Idioms and other complex formulation is such documents, but it shall still be in English nonetheless. I agree here too. Cheers, -- - Cor - http://nl.libreoffice.org
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 3:57 AM, Cor Nouws oo...@nouenoff.nl wrote: Hi all, When inviting people in the Dutch language community to consider membership of TDF, two items showed up. 1. Not all active people are familiar enough with the beautiful English language to feel comfortable to use the application page ( related info). has partial translation been considered, and if not, can it be? From a practical stand-point, the only actual prerogative of members is their ability to vote for BoD and MC. How could one make an educated decision as to whom to vote for without basic understanding of who the candidates are and what they stand for, hence, in most case, without understanding of basic English ? 2. Not all supporters are active in a way that they feel like applying form membership. the idea 'supportive membership' has been mentioned before. Has it been discussed too? I'm not sure what that means... can you elaborate ? Norbert PS: I do think that current member should 'invite' people they know to be active to become member (and drop a heads-up/recommendation email to the membership committee). PS2: the main problem with non-conventional 'activity' is the ability of the MC to objectively measure it... having existing member vouching for such activities would go a long way, I think, in making that happen.
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hello Norbert, Cor, all, Le mardi 22 mai 2012 à 08:25 -0500, Norbert Thiebaud a écrit : On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:36 AM, sophie gautier.sop...@gmail.com wrote: This is what language communities are supposed to do : give those who don't speak English a chance to be part of the project. We can't rely only on English speaking people to grow the community and represent it every where in the world. This is why settling each of our actions on an i18n point of view first is very important. That conjure to me the following quote (from a brazillian TDF member on the aooo-dev ML) 4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called a contributor should fill a agreement request in order to be recognized. So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of channels, many of them obscured. 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them didn't vote for him. Which, to me, indicate that the language barrier is being use and abuse to mislead (*), and the underlying 'nationalism' is disturbing to me. the notion the TDF should be the UN with 'national representative' is pretty scary (**) :-( Norbert (*) TDF does not _require_ anything to 'contribute'. for code contribution we ask for the proper licensing... but that is true of nay project. member need to be contributors but contributors are not required to be member. For instance last time I checked Tor is not a member, yet he is undeniably a contributor. Sure, to become a member, one is asked to agree to the tenet of the organization one want to become a member of... nothing shocking about that... (**) the notion of 'brazillian' member is shocking to me, just like the notion of 'French' member or 'Finnish' member... a member is a member, his national origin is irrelevant. And voting for a BoD member based on such irrelevant criteria is disturbing to me. I'll try to go back to the initial two questions. The first one, the one of the language, is an important one. To my very own surprise (and partial misunderstanding) we have lots of enthusiastic volunteers who *do and contribute* lots of efforts but are almost fully unable to interact with the English language. This in turn brings many undesired effect, such as the lack of recognition and the lack of awareness of TDF's affairs. I don't believe that it's a matter of nationalism. Of course you will always find rotten apples in every discussion and every group. But the lack of fluency in English is a problem and while we cannot provide English lessons to people, we ought to have tools that allow for a reasonable understanding of at least important matters, and have local communities that can use one or more proxy to understand what's going on. Worldwide communities are full of resources for us: developers, QA testers, documentation writers, localizers, marketers, extension writers... All of them grow our ecosystem, expand our reach, and by doing so are a vital part of the community. Never forget about what made the success of OpenOffice.org in the first place: not its development methods, but its ability to permeate every market and user base thanks to a huge, ubiquitous and enthusiastic community. So if we can, say, translate a certain page such as the membership application page or have a process ready for people who are active but who cannot interact well with English, the MC should work on this. On Cor's second question, I read it in two very different ways. One way to understand the issue is that we have people who don't feel they qualify so they would like a different kind of membership. I think that, just like what's written in the bylaws, membership is something you earn, not something you can just ask for. But I'm sure we can come up with a different term, because I also don't wish to downgrade the value of membership by watering it down with other kinds of membership. Fan of LibreOffice, for instance, etc. One reminder though: I think the criteria for membership are quite broad, and I think the real issue is that people don't apply, not that they get frustrated because they are rejected. The second way for me to read this is that I think this question outlines the need for more structure inside the LibreOffice project (no, not Red Tape) . Structure as in, having roles that are existing in fact, but never recognized with a small signature or just clearly marked on a page. Case in point? The localiers; we may want to have a french l10n team for instance, and he/she does not have a to be a TDF member for that. We ought to have a clear Documentation Team leader (yes Jean, I know, I know ;-) )and so on and so forth. I actually think
Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters
Hi all, Thanks for the thoughts... Charles-H.Schulz wrote (22-05-12 18:43) I'll try to go back to the initial two questions. The first one, the one of the language, is an important one. To my very own surprise (and partial misunderstanding) we have lots of enthusiastic volunteers who *do and contribute* lots of efforts but are almost fully unable to interact with the English language. This in turn brings many undesired effect, such as the lack of recognition and the lack of awareness of [...] base thanks to a huge, ubiquitous and enthusiastic community. So if we can, say, translate a certain page such as the membership application page or have a process ready for people who are active but who cannot interact well with English, the MC should work on this. Or/and the Membership Committee could, after the initial steps, bring the idea to the l10n lists, just to let the ones that want it, translate some part. And indeed, Norbert, this implies that people with a particular language help each other to understand the various topics. On Cor's second question, I read it in two very different ways. One way to understand the issue is that we have people who don't feel they qualify so they would like a different kind of membership. I think that, just like what's written in the bylaws, membership is something you earn, not something you can just ask for. But I'm sure we can come up with a different term, because I also don't wish to downgrade the value of membership by watering it down with other kinds of membership. Fan of LibreOffice, for instance, etc. Yes, using the term 'member' would be inappropriate. It's about supporters: people that are not active, but want to express their support in a clear way. One reminder though: I think the criteria for membership are quite broad, and I think the real issue is that people don't apply, not that they get frustrated because they are rejected. [...] AFAIAA, that does not play any role for the situations that I want to solve. The second way for me to read this is that I think this [...] Was not what I had in mind. Kind regards, -- - Cor - http://nl.libreoffice.org
