On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 22:41 +0200, Charles Schulz wrote:
> Ian,
> 
> I'm afraid this will lead us nowhere. You know perfectly that there will
> not be an Native-Lang project for english.

Of course I do. But I think its a mistake. Is freedom of speech to be
banned now as well? Even if this was reconsidered now I wouldn't have
time to do anything as I have committed to other important open source
related things, but some others might be motivated to join the community
if such opportunities were still open.

>  You also know that a
> native-lang project is language based, not country based. 

So why is there a Brazillian Portuguese project and a Portuguese
Portuguese project?

> You also know
> that this has nothing to do with the "paranoia" of marketing project
> losing the control of I don't know what part of the community.

In some people I'm very sure so please don't tell me what I do and don't
know. This is politics so we might as well be honest and say there are
differences in perspective. In the end politics is about control of
resources and this is community politics. Those with the most power and
influence are the ones that are most likely to be concerned with having
that power eroded. Machiavelli and all that.

>  If you
> refer to this community as being you,

I have never done so. You have done it, not me.

>  I'm afraid nobody here never had
> any control on you anyway.

No-one has any control over any volunteer in a volunteer venture. Some
people do, however, control the resources available and impact
disproportionately on how new resources can be generated and deployed.
They can provide positive incentives for volunteers to put resource into
the project or they can deter them and so they take their resources
elsewhere or never get involved in the first place. Personally, I have
no desire to control any part of the OOo project and never have had. I
was asked to stand as marketing lead way back but declined as I knew I
would not have been able to do the job justice because of constraints on
my time. I didn't ask to be education lead, it was suggested to me. If I
was a control freak I think I would have taken those opportunities. I'm
quite happy to take a back seat and provide information. If I oppose
anything it is bullying and management decisions that deter or alienate
volunteers.

This discussion came up because someone enquired about the lack of
merchandising and that developed into the issue of native language
projects providing local merchandising and the potential to raise funds
locally and supply goods locally. This is not possible in England. That
is a fact. The option was effectively killed last year despite some
initial support leading me to believe that this was a paranoid reaction
to some of the personalities involved when it was realised that this
might enable the EN-NL project to set up its own foundation which was
seen as a potential fork. If anyone wanted to fork the project, there
would be much easier ways to do it.

> Now, if you complain about the lack of T-shirts, just go get some at the
> nearest supermarket , put a logo on it or "I love OpenOffice.org" and
> rest the case. Sometimes life can be simple and easy.

I might be a lot of things, but simplistic and naive, I am not. 

> Now, could we just switch to some other topic?

Anytime you want to.

Ian
-- 
www.theINGOTS.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.opendocumentfellowship.org

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