Re: Arabeyes -- a critique

[Samy Al Bahra <samy at kerneled dot org>]

On Yaum al-Jumma 03 Thu al-Hijjah 1425 10:31 pm, Arafat Medini wrote:
> Salam,
>
> What I am really frustrated about is only one thing, that we are too
> few people to really do something.

I am really frustrated that we are too few *LAZY* people.
As ElZubeir (see suffering bastard) stated in such a concise and wonderful 
manner, stagnantation of the Arabeyes project is the result of our 
community's environment. Sure, it's friendly and professional, but it is far 
from nurturing.

> Ok maybe if we all work like mad 23 
> hours a day then we can accomplish everything in two years, but then
> we need standards, people who work like machines and don't have any
> other thing to do and a market to see the consequence of our work in
> it.

Please see,
  http://www.DragonFlyBSD.org
  http://www.NetBSD.org
  http://www.OpenBSD.org
  http://www.BZflag.org
  http://www.picogui.org
  a majority of open-source software...

The above are examples of wonderful and innovative software projects started 
(and some still) on the backs of only a handful of individuals. With a good 
technical backhand and some motivation, these projects came to reality. 
Arabeyes lacks the technical backhand.

A lot of the developers do not know where to contribute next because they do 
not know how to (be it experience or knowledge). I think AE will evolve into 
an amazing force with this mentoring program as it not only fosters knowledge 
(hell, this is enough to drive AE) but will foster growth of OSS developers 
in the Arab world.

> Second thing were I am inclined to agree with Elzubair is that we are
> always reacting but never acting. If you look to our group then you
> see a group which tries to extend support to existing software but was
> never really innovative itself. This is not totally true we the ITL
> tools libquran, but that's it, with my high respect bicon katoob and
> the others are only reactions to existing developments.
>
> But OSS was never innovative anyway, and then the Arabic world is
> practically not existent to support us in any form anyway...

I am saddened to hear that you think OSS was never innovative, but I am happy 
to tell you that this statement must come from ignorance. OSS is the breath 
of innovation. Tell me one new innovative software technology today that is 
not or did not originate or perfect its form in the open-source arena?

The Arabic world is practically non-existant in support? What about these 
developers and translators? We *are* the representation of open-source in the 
Arab world, we have a responsibility to make sure we support ourselves.

I believe ElZubeir's mentoring program should be taken into deep study soon, 
very soon. It will be the greatest move AE will make, no questions asked, no 
doubts.

It will be an accelerating force for our goal as the melting pot of the 
development of open-source software for the Arab world. I cannot point out 
what a bunch of monkies we will turn out to be if we ignore the problems that 
ElZubeir pointed out (as they are so obvious that even a monkey could see 
them, and they are only a portion of AE's problems).

Get cracking on this core!

-- 
Samy Al Bahra [samy at kerneled dot org]
  '-- http://samy.kerneled.org