On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Joe Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Donald Whytock <[email protected]> >> To: [email protected] >> Cc: >> Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 11:07 AM >> Subject: Re: Umbrella projects >> >> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Why not just send the ballot to >>> ooo-commits in Sumerian? >> >> I should think that would have to at least start out on ooo-dev-sux. >> >> NL development outsider here, asking for clarification...Would changes >> to the ixn components be considered changes to the "source"? Because >> if it doesn't involve actual code changes I could see such a thing >> justifying a vote on some ooo-dev-xx but then only needing lazy >> consensus on ooo-dev. > > 90% of the organizational concern for releases regards their licensing, > which I don't believe gets translated into other languages (at least not > without legal-discuss@ approval of the actual text.) > > I have no idea where ixn lives in the subversion tree, but mods that > are committed to the tree are still mods that need to be voted on > when it comes time to release something based on those files. > > My suggestion is for per-lang committers to be placed on the PPMC, > and for those folks to conduct their votes on their per-lang list. > Once that's accomplished, lets leave the training wheels on at first > and ask ooo-dev@ to approve the release candidates via lazy consensus. > Then take the whole shebang to the general@incubator list for formal > approval by the IPMC (this step will go away when ooo graduates). >
Maybe someone can clear up exactly what we're talking about with a language release. My understanding was we have a core code base, that has all code-dependent i10n features in it. We also have translations, dictionaries, etc., per language. We can build a release in English and then require that the user download an additional "language pack" to enable an additional language. Or we can spin off a build (more of a new install build) to include an additional language. You can see this here, with the existing releases: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html So the question comes down to: what languages do we support via officially-released install images, versus which ones are supported via language packs? For example, today, for Uzbek, it is only available via a language pack. This might vary based on the timing of the translation. In other words, we might release a new version with core languages supported, and then enable additional languages over time as translations complete. It would not make sense to wait for a release until all 160 language translations are complete. I think it would be overkill to support this model via PPMC delegation. OOo supports 110 languages. At 3 PPMC members per language (for the required 3 +1's in a release vote) that comes to 330 PPMC members. Of course, there will be some overlap, so maybe it comes down to 200 new PPMC members or so, plus or minus 50. I'm not sure that makes sense. So it is not clear that delegation to NL PPMC members really solves the problem. We need to be having a conversation between those who are doing the translations, those testing the translations and the PPMC, on whether a translation is ready to release, either via language pack or as a full install. Of course, if the Mentors wish to mentor 110 different NL groups on the finer points of release management at Apache, then I don't want to get in their way. But I'll propose a simpler solution. We should make it easy to nominate and approve releases of language packs and full installs based on already approved source releases. All we need is some indication from an expert that a given translation was ready. This might be from a PPMC member, a Committer, or a number of Users on the user list who have tried a pre-release language pack snapshot. We need to rely on expertise here, expertise outside of the PPMC. But once we decide to spin a new release, I don't think why this is not most easily done by a vote on ooo-dev. And I'd feel much better if the same volunteers who are building the core installs also built the 110 language versions. It makes zero sense to have 330 different people doing this (110 languages x 3 platforms). There is too much scope for error. -Rob
