[elzubeir@fakkir.net: Arabic Linux]

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at fakkir dot net>]

This message was sent to IBM.

----- Forwarded message from Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at fakkir dot net> ----

Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 16:59:20 -0600
From: Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at fakkir dot net>
To: Basma Alwesh <balwesh at hillandknowlton dot co dot ae>
Subject: Arabic Linux
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

Salam,

My name is Mohammed Elzubeir, and I am a member of the Arabeyes project
(http://www.arabeyes.org/). We have been actively and voluntarily working
on Linux Arabization for some time now. We are very surprised to see 
IBM's announcement about an Arabized Linux distribution due by mid-2002.

It is notes the following: 

"IBM has simultaneously been leading a coordinated effort to share information
and progress amongst the different localization groups working on the
Arabisation of Linux in the region. IBM has taken this initiative to ensure
that the various efforts complement each other, and that there is a free
exchange of information on challenges faced, progress achieved, and very
importantly, terminology used, resulting in inter-operability between the
various approaches."

We would like to know how we were missed in this initiative to ensure the
various efforts complement each other? The Arabeyes project addressed several
of those issues:

  a. terminology - 
     We have made a great emphasis on this in our project 
       o KDE translation progress (http://www.arabeyes.org/projects/kde.php)
       o QaMoose dictionary (http://www.arabeyes.org/projects/qamoose.php)
       o Arabic Documentation Standards draft
         (http://www.arabeyes.org/papers/doc-standard.pdf)

  b. console -
     We have been working on Akka to drive the console (say, during initial
     installation and setup)
       o Akka (http://www.arabeyes.org/projects/akka.php)

  c. office applications - 
     Although we haven't touched on word processors, we started with the text
     editors (ie. VIM)
       o VIM Arabic support (http://www.arabeyes.org/projects/vim.php)
 
In fact, Arabeyes did submit papers to the Linux Arabization Workshop
which IBM played a key role in organizing. The papers we submitted are:
  o Arabeyes Manifesto (http://www.arabeyes.org/papers/arabeyes/)
  o BiDi Proposals (http://www.arabeyes.org/papers/bidi/) 

We believe that we are contributing to Arabization, given our financial
limitations (we are an Open Source project, with no sponsor or any financial
backing). However, we are very surprised to see that we have received no
communication from IBM or any of the affiliated groups regarding our
involvement.

I would also like to ask about the type(s) of license(s) IBM intends to use for
this distribution. Is IBM patching pre-existing GPL'ed (and other Open Source
type) libraries and applications, or writing its own software (e.g. Office
applications).

Finally, how can Arabeyes get involved and help with this project?

Thank you.

----- End forwarded message -----


-- 
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| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
-------------------------------------------------------