Re: Arabeyes -- a critique

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

Salam,

After reading all these messages, I decided to read the original one. Bad
order, I know, but so it happened.

Very good message, the general gist of which I agree with. Some points:


> It is unthinkable that Arabization is something that we will be doing
> for the next 20 years. However, there will be one issue remaining which
> will require constant updates and maintenance -- namely, translation.
> The question would then be, do we want Arabeyes to end up being a
> primarily translation effort?

I see translation as something that will eventually finish. It should be later
carried either by Redhat and the like, goverments and the like, KACST and the
like, or original development teams, according to 'market' demand. In other
words, when Linux becomes more mainstream, this gets passed to corporations who
have interest in it. At that point we should pass our expertise to them.

> This is not to belittle the hard work involved in translating GUI's and 
> various other documents. However, translation alone has and should not
> be the primary business of Arabeyes.

I agree. But let's say that Arabeyes initiates, brews and transfers FOSS Arabic
expertise. We make expertise in translation, we pass that. We make expertise in
programming, we pass that. Web interfaces, the same. So .. (see later)


> One could say that Arabeyes can be involved in setting standards with
> the various standardization bodies once it is a legal entity. Even if
> Arabeyes becomes a legal entity and is able to collect enough donations
> to pay to join consortiums such as Unicode, W3C, etc., it will not be
> enough. 

.. I envisage Arabeyes, in the long run, as an expertise factory. Participating
in standards, encouraging expertise in translation, complex text layout, etc.
Central to this weltanschauung (world view) is your mentoring idea. Another
thing is the passing expertise and responsibities to others, so we are
shouldering less load at any time.

> In the beginning of 2003, I have posted a few recommendations [7] to
> overcome this technical lacking by introducing a mentoring program.
> Despite this being accepted as a 'nice idea' in principle, no effort
> whatsoever has been put to make it a reality.

May be because you didn't introduce it a piece at a time so it was a lot on
others? I am not against you actually, when I read the e-mail it is a
marvellous piece of work. I want to think if there was any way to get this
done..

> This is mainly because
> Arabeyes is too engulfed in its day-to-day activities with no more focus
> on the big picture. This by no means is to say that the above mentioned
> recommendations are the only or best way to proceed -- they are merely
> suggestions that have had a very very short thread associated with it.
> This simply shows that no real interest has really been given to an
> otherwise rather important issue. It is a survival issue.

There was so much interest by various people at various times. Due to inertia,
I am afraid I would say most of them were shot down as 'internal and external
battles'. You are facing that yourself now. "self-flagellation and cries of
doom"?
Any large change in the rules of the game - Arabeyes goals, or usual methods to
achieve that goal - would face that.

> Unfortunately, we seem to be more interested in issuing press releases
> and doing interviews than dealing with the future of Arabeyes as a
> project.

I would say that the few PR's and interviews done are a step forward. A
different way to advocate.

In short, my suggestion is:
Make Arabeyes the centre of the FOSS community in the Arab world, engaging in
things like standards, growing LUGs, coordinating other groups. It needn't be
very large that way, but it would be very influential.

Feel free to use, discuss and of these ideas in your common
suggestions/recmmendations, though I don't feel I have added many original
things anyway.

Salam,
Muhammad Alkarouri


	
	
		
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