Re: Arabeyes -- a critique

[Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk>]

 --- Arafat Medini <arafato at gmail dot com> wrote: 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Arafat Medini <arafato at gmail dot com>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:34:21 +0100
> Subject: Re: Arabeyes -- a critique
> To: Samy Al Bahra <samy at kerneled dot org>
[...]
> > 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 hate this slowly coming concensus about ourselves being so dumb that
> we can't do anything. Well if you want to call yourself dumb please do
> it but not me. If I wanted to write my own gnome app I would learn C,
> learn gnome apis and after three years I'll make an ill app, and after
> four I'll be a star in the FOSS world, don't believe me? go ask Havoc
> pennington or Marco pesenti gritti, what a ...

+5

> 
> > 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.
>

Mentoring is good. But mentoring is not an answer, mentoring is a question
(how). Don't believe me? Why didn't it happen yet?
Last time I was thinking in someting similar, the unicode people here thought
that 'well, we don't need to help educate others,let's do it ourselves' (my
interpretation). Too few resources for mentoring..

> And again some new burocracy and everyone is happy... But the REAL
> work I am asking for it for years doesn't get tackled. If you want to
> help be the maintainer of QAC for eg.!
> 
> > 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?
> 
> Yeah I saw innovation sprakling in the FOSS world, please name to me
> ONE and only one innovation in the FOSS world?

Perl, python: the scripting (very high level) language mentality. Care to tell
me their proprietary/m$ counterparts? Don't tell me VBscript, it's at least 6
years  later than either.
TCP/IP, www: and most of the internet architecture. Where do you think m$ got
its tcp/ip stack from.
VNC (virtual network computing) and now Xen from Cambridge University, UK
Grid computing: Globus toolkit version 4, still no proprietary counterparts.
Tell me how many do you want, so I can give you more.. Whole sections of
innovations are more FOSS than proprietary.

> 
> Firefox? see Opera
> Mono? well ... .net
> what else ? KDEs bloated monstrousity???
> 
> Please name ONE innovation, FOSS people are proud to copy things from
> the others! I'm saying this not from ignorance but after a long
> conversation with Miguel de Icaza.

Correct. This very faithfully represents his opinion. Ask University of
California at Berkeley, of BSD fame.. They have a different opinion altogether.
Don't underestimate academic contributions, more open source than not, and more
innovative than not. De Icaza is only one person, other opinions exist. Still,
I am proud to copy things, and to innovate.

> > 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.

Didn't check old e-mails yet. Any new suggestions, Elzubeir, on how to do this?
Please discuss why we weren't able to do this when it was suggested before, and
what can we do about that.

> 
> It seems you Arabic people like burocracy I'm really wondering why.
> 

While, like a true geek, you are against that, I see here in the UK they also
have a lot of beauocracy. Germany is noted for its efficiency, does that meaan
they don't have this? Surely good for registering Arabeyes there (just thinking
out loud)..


Salam,
Muhammad


	
	
		
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