On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 11:31:18AM -0700, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> --- Mohamed Eldesoky <arabi hotpop com> wrote:
> > Can you believe that man ??
Sadly, I can.
> > http://www.ameinfo.com/cgi-bin/fevent/showarticle.cgi?id=101302181704
>
> Salam Mohamed (et al), what follows are very personal opinions and
> by no means reflect arabeyes' stance.
>
> I am extremely confused, perplexed and actually mad at what I read
> since I don't view their quotes as being very correct and are rather
> misleading. A case in point; the following was noted in the article,
>
> "The team in Egypt has successfully adapted the core
> components that are crucial to make Linux capable of
> handling Arabic text properly, and has released a
> number of important standards and applications, now
> placed into the hands of the open source community."
>
> Can someone note what those components are (beyond ICU and the
> mozilla patches) ?
Motif is the big IBM thing. Obsolete technology, IMHO. However,
it's what a lot of IBM software is written in. So basically you
can say, they have done things to make their programs support
Arabic.
> A couple of key things -- where is this Xterm ?? Beyond Mozilla
In an IBM dungeon somewhere.. ;)
> our emails get thrown out I guess). So I'm not sure what they mean
> by "IBM...driving a coordinated effort to share information and
> progress amongst the different localisation groups...", arabeyes
> has certainly seen _none_ of it.
What they probably mean is the Li18nux group (http://www.li18nux.org/).
IBM is listed as a 'Solution Provider'. Once again, it is an organization
that Arabeyes should be a part of ASAP.
> Sorry for the rant, I just couldn't hold this in. As noted it really
> made me boil.
>
I think it makes most of us feel uncomfortable with IBM. The truth of the
matter is, IBM is a business and is most certainly not 'community-driven'.
One should also note that IBM has historically held that "if it's not done
at IBM then it's not good enough" (which was the reason why they shrank from
their size back in the 80's). It seems that remnants of this attitude are
still prevalent in IBM culture.
Also, I firmly believe that IBM looks at us suspeciously. One can not deny
that businesses such as IBM view us as a potential threat. We are essentially
doing most of what they plan to make their money on, for free, and with no
strings attached.
Other than that, one must also understand that such interviews are more of
'advertisements' for IBM. There is always going to be some exaggeration,
bending of truth and in some instances, outright lies.
So when IBM says "community", they are stretching it. When they say, "all
linux core components", they are lying (unless there are linux kernel patches
we are not aware of).
All in all, I'm disgusted.
DISCLAIMER: The above does not reflect the views of the Arabeyes Project but
that of the author only.
later
--
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| Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: |
| | http://www.arabeyes.org/ |
| Arabeyes Project | Homepage: |
| Unix the 'right' way | http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
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