On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 11:33:45AM +0100, Muhammad Alkarouri wrote: > > [..] > > - KACST, which can be regarded as a statutory personality, wants to > participate in various translation projects of open source projects. > They have paid manpower to do that. Notice that this is totally > different than these individuals volunteering to translate on their own. Fair enough. > [..] >` > - Naturally, they expect that the credit will not go to each person > individually in their group as this is an institution job, but to them. > This includes both the thanks and the legal responsibility for their > contributions. There are no "thanks" file or similar in PO's. However, I think you hit a key point here. > - Rather than doing that on their own, they want to do this through > Arabeyes. "Rather than"? The natural thing is to do it with the existing translation team -- this is how it works with all projects we are involved with. In this case, it happens to be Arabeyes. If someone wants to say, you know what, KDE's translation is crap, we will re-do the whole thing, there's nothing that can stop them. However, only Arabeyes' translations will be part of the official KDE release. I am only mentining KDE as an example, this would apply to all projects. In this case, going to Arabeyes is the natural process. It also happens to be the most beneficial to their objectives and ours. Everyone goes home with a prize. > > Now I think some points should be clarified. > - All these contributions are open source, GPL, am I right? They are open source, yes -- as with everything on arabeyes.org. > - KACST will have the copyright on the translations. (I notice that > currently the translations are copyrighted to the individual > translators, though the Language-Team is Arabic <doc at arabeyes dot org>). I am not so sure about that. More on this below. > > [..] > > As for individuals in the team registering on their own, you are > bypassing the external institution, which naturally claims more credit > and responsibility for paying and sparing them for this job than them. Yes, they are responsible for their employees, but Arabeyes is ultimately responsible for the translations. > They may not have the expertise necessary to use cvs, but the instituion As I have suggested to Munzir, I think this is a non-issue. He is physically there, so he can setup the appropriate environment. The issue with CVS vs. credits should not be mixed together. > And I think that we have enough of politeness already given. Let's talk > straight here. People should be polite but straight. They don't conflict with one another. > The issue is whether Arabeyes can coordinate with external institutions > as institutions or they cannot deal except with individuals? > In the open source world, dealing with institutions is standard > practice. > If Arabeyes agrees to deal with institutions, it can do so on its own > rules. We need to make these rules. I believe they are already available > for monetary donations and things like servers, etc. You are absolutely right. Arabeyes doesn't have a published mechanism of how to accept contributions from external institutes. We will hopefully come up with a scheme by the end of today's core meeting (everyone welcome to attend [1]). This however, if you will note, Munzir has failed to express those issues and we ended up in a "I want to conceal my identity" debate. > If not, that settles it. Though I will be sorry. An important example is > that it will be difficult to get contributions from university projects > and companies, because the work of any undergraduate or postgraduate That is simply not true. > project is copyright the university. And the GPL specifically reminds us > that your employer or school should sign a copyright disclaimer for that > reason. Yes, many schools do have such laws, and the GPL mentions it. > As for doubt about intentions, to help or otherwise, can somebody tell > me what will we earn from making all this fuss at Arabeyes? > Absolutely nothing. I think your paraphrasing of Munzir's initial post has cleared several things (for me at least). Regards -- ------------------------------------------------------- | Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: | | | http://www.arabeyes.org/ | | Arabeyes Project | Homepage: | | Unix the 'right' way | http://elzubeir.fakkir.net/ | -------------------------------------------------------
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