Re: Ubuntu Muslim Edition

["Djihed Afifi" <djihedlists at googlemail dot com>]

Salam,

I have to say, wow, that's pretty bad email, Youssef, shame on you.

First, why is it that when anyone does something within their vision,
and what they see as important, someone jumps in and suggests that
their work is useless, and that thou has THE VISION and the know how
to dictate whatever you think is the right thing to do?

Here is a big hint:

Do it yourself. If you can't, get a team to do it with you on good
terms. I'd hate to break to you, and I don't necessarily mean you here
(far from it), the ones who usually think they can dictate what other
people should do and that anything else is worthless are the ones who
do absolutely nothing or very little. So beware of getting into that
camp.

Personally , I'm quite impressed by the work of ubuntume, I do share
some of the ideas. Although I think it needs a few tweaks to its goals
and vision I'd be very pleased to help and contribute at some point.

> Honestly, I do not appreciate this project at all. It is useless since it
> doesn't bring anything new to normal distribution.

It's a start, and he clearly lays out what he thinks should be done in
the future, which is IMO viable and does fill a void. Given enough
people, of course the project will evolve.

> You can be more useful by
> investing your skills in other projects that can make new technologies reach
> the muslim community. For example, even if you do not speak Arabic, you can
> help support Arabic-script languages that are the main languages of the
> muslim world and culture: Bidirectionality, right-to-left interfaces, OCR,
> text-to-speech, etc. are among the technologies that are needed by these
> languages.

Cool, other people enjoy building a distro, not your top priority,
woop-do-bee, let them. Chances are they enjoy doing it.

A lot of this stems from the fact that we in the Arab/Muslim world are
left behind in terms of IT, and thus we feel this "dire need" to catch
up, so sometimes developers come with this mentality of being pressed
to do *everything*, even if they don't enjoy it. End result: what they
do RARELY succeeds.

In OSS (and even paid word, as research suggests), a primary motivator
is ENJOYMENT. If you don't enjoy what you do, you won't work well in
it, and if you are not paid for it, chances are you will do it even
worse and abandon it at some stage. It follows that you just CAN'T
dictate what other people should do. Let them show their strengths,
follow their enjoyment and manifest their abilities, good results and
programs will be the end side effect.


> Moreover, this is
> a silly imitation of the already critisized Christian Edition of Ubuntu.

This is what really the last straw it and prompted me to write this
email. You really think you can read his intentions?

> I
> don't meant to be harsh or have any bad intention, but a muslim can use any
> of the current distributions without any problems, as I do.

And everyone in the arab/muslim world have the same level of
proficiency in English and the same computer and Linux know-how as you
do, right?


Now I get to write my sorry for being angry and for the rant. This
email is not meant merely as a response to your email. It's a response
to the weak and bankrupt attitude that is prevailing in many
Arab/Muslim minds who think they can dictate whatever should be done
to save the arab/muslim world (tada). In general, I would just ignore
it as I usually do. But the fact is this mentality actually harms
people and projects, it's a serious let-down for developers, and goes
against the most previous reward a developer can get: appreciation.

Mehdi: good initiative, I am very thankful for you including Minbar in
the initial release.

Actually, a group of individual arab distro builders have been brewing
uniting efforts to build one polished distribution with similar vision
and details as yours (built on top of another). I was supposed to
shout an announcement at some point with an agreement when a shared
goal and vision comes up and as and invitation for everybody to share
their ideas. I am very enthusiastic about having you contribute your
ideas and vision.

Djihed