[Ubuntu-manual] Not happy at all

[Kenneth Nielsen]

2010/12/24 Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org>:
> On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 09:48:11AM +0100, lafeber-dumoleyn2 wrote:
>> Op 22-12-10 21:35, Khaled Hosny schreef:
>> >On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 06:51:15PM +0100, Ask Hjorth Larsen wrote:
>> >>My opinion on what we need technically:
>> >>
>> >>Fuzzy matching and a word-wise po-file diffing utility.
>> >Lunchpad developers seem not to think that translators effort and
>> >resources is worthy saving, this is not the first time this issue is
>> >brought up. All what I got last time was some, more time consuming,
>> >workarounds, so I just gave up; I only start translating just before the
>> >translation deadline even if it means some translations might not make
>> >it into the release, as I value my, very limited, time and resources.
>> >
>> >Regards,
>> >  Khaled
>> >
>> Hello Khaled,
>> I think what you say here is unfair towards all those people who
>> work very hard behind the scenes.
>> We should show some respect.
>
> I don't think criticizing developers for failing to address what I (and
> others as it seems) consider a critical issue is showing disrespect.
>
> Just because we are volunteers (though I don't think launchpad
> developers are) does not put us above criticism. If someone does not
> like my criticism he can just ignore it, if receiving such criticism
> feels so bad to him he can as well stop doing that work and move to
> something else that he don't receive criticism for (I often do myself).
>
> In the other hand, I may feel that forcing me to use an inefficient tool
> that wasts my time is not showing respect to my volunteer work (that
> Canonical also forced me to license under a week copyleft license so
> they can use it in commercial projects I don't know about, something I
> would not have done if I had more choice). Remind you, I'm not
> interested in Launchpad or Rosetta or whatever, my only interest is to
> translate a distribution that I use.
>
> Regards,
>  Khaled

I just recently had a similar discussion with a Launchpad developer
and here are some of the explanations I got. Launchpad developers are
not "failing" to fix this critical issue, they are simply working on
another one, namely better/automatic upstream integration. This is
something that have previously been identified as the most critical
issue, therefore that is what they are working on (They are actually
working from a prioritized list which is based on _user feedback_, I
don't remember the link unfortunately). Like most other free software
developer teams there is only a limited amount of paid developer time
and right now that is being used elsewhere as I explained above, and
for this particular project (Launchpad translations) community
contributions to the code are almost non-existent (except for
excellent contributions from Adi).

When it comes to the part about being "forced" to use Launchpad I sort
of agree with you. I don't want to be forced either, I like to choose
my tools myself. But the point is, that we are not really forced
because we can export, it is only because of the delayed email based
export feature that this is not a viable solution. HOWEVER, as I
remember that is also already on the worklist. And actually, this
could potentially be a good place for community contributions.
Historically, the only reason for making the export feature delayed
and email based was a problem of evening out server load. This
restriction does not exist any more, so a direct export feature could
be allowed. As I understand there is already API to access the
translation components, so it should just be for someone to get going.

> (that
> Canonical also forced me to license under a week copyleft license so
> they can use it in commercial projects I don't know about, something I
> would not have done if I had more choice)

This is a canonical policy, that you are free to agree with or not.
But it has nothing to do with the tools/developer prioritisation. You
could have full server access to all the po-files at the snap of your
fingers, and your contributions could still be put under those terms.

Regards Kenneth