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 <[email protected]> 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 that's the real question, which is how we acknowledge our contributors in a more proactive and "daily" fashion; the TDF membership is a rather powerful tool, but it is of limited use on a daily basis inside the project. My two eurocents, -- Charles-H. Schulz Co-Founder & Director, The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
