Re: OpenArabia

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Youssef Chahibi <chahibi at gmail dot com> wrote:
> Glad to see signs of life from you [Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj].

I strongly concur :-)

> I think that for now the idea of involvement from LUGs is to be excluded
> -as in not believing in so much hope-, LUGs are pretty inactive in my
> eyes, if they were active the way the OpenArabia.org idea expect them to 
> be then I should have noticed that. LUGs are good because they bring the
> idea very close to the end-users and potential participants, but it is
> simply not the case.

That wasn't always the case - there were periods, in the not too
distant past, when the Egyptian and Lebanese LUGs (among others)
were very active not only with members but made very encouraging
strides in appealing to a much wider geographic audience (Linux
install parties, University campaigns, etc).  Again, leadership
is needed on all fronts but with a little bit of hand-holding and
some insight and encouragement one shouldn't discount cooperative
results.

> In my imaginary concept of OpenArabia.Org, the project needs a lot of
> care from many carers, getting news, writing news and present quality
> content is not a one man's job at all, it is a community's job.

I would caution from doing this since we are a very small (ie. tiny)
community and writing news items and requiring contribution can't be
sustained (linux4arab.com's last news post was in 2005).  The idea
(and again let's keep it simple, basic, manageable and sustainable)
is simply to,

 a. Agreegate RSS feeds from various like-minded organizations
 b. Maintain a repository of various open licensed data (books,
    audio, art, etc)
 c. Provide a means for the "open sourced" community to interact
    beyond source code and software applications
 d. Provide an avenue for job providers to post job listings to
    a very select interest crowd/group
 e. Foster better communication among all groups involved to bring
    us all closer

If one is able to setup the site and automate it enough to pull the
data, its maintainer wouldn't be required to spend too much time on
it (or at least would be given the option to build it up with whatever
other content he/she wishes slowly).

Just my $0.02's worth.

Salam.

 - Nadim


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