[Kde-i18n-fa] A real Open Source Movement

[Hossein]

Hello;
   This is a computer engineering student who loves U*NIXs in general. I
am going to contribute as much as I can to this Open Source project
because of the following reasons and I hope those who are working on it
right now will accept me.

1.Obviously Iran’s only choice as an OS is a modified Open Source OS and
most likely Linux is going to be that Open Source OS.
2.The governing people have already got to this point (or at least they
pretend the have ;-) )
3.A national project has been defined namely known as “National OS”. And
some people have begun working on it.
4.The most important thing is that long before this FarsiKDE has been
working on it or at least on very important aspects of it and as I know
those who have been officially assigned to the “National OS” project have
intentionally undertaken FarsiKDE’s efforts.
5.Every thing was going well until this last thing happened. And now it is
time for the real nature of Open Source to change the situation. And if we
don’t introduce it know probably this is going to become something
official and governmental like many other things in our dear country.
6.I believe the officials must come to this point that this is not
something which can be done with a 500 million Toman official project and
needs academic and public help because the nature of the project is an
open source one and any effort to make it official and governmental is
condemned to fail.

I can see a day when a poor Farsi version of KDE or any other stuff in
Linux is hesitantly made ready with thousands of bugs and even not
complete, and because it is an official project it has to be put in work.
The next day the 2 O’clock news reporter will come with some thing like
this:
"After months of hard effort internal computer specialists have “CREATED”
the national Operating System. Dr ... the leader of the project told our
reporter that this is going to bring 100000000000000000000 $ of economical
advantage and..."

       After just a few days every thing is going to be forgotten in
public and in the first sessions of test (If there is any test in
Iran) every body would understand that it is far away from what
they thought and it can in no ways substitute any of Micro$oft’s
products and since they are too expensive we will continue copying
them without shame and the rest of the world will continue
undertaking our software and this loop will go for at least a
couple of other years.

	But what we should do to prevent the story from going further (Since I
believe it has already begun) is to make the public aware of everything
and without paying attention to official warnings make this true
prediction public and beside that give them the right solution that is a
real Open Source movement which is not paid and is not responsible for
urgent cases such as things like this one (This is an example and is not
necessarily the case of “National OS”):
	The current Minister wants the project be finished before the end of this
year because this is the last year of the current government!
	I believe in good coding and working instead of talking, but I also
believe if you cannot tell the truth others will make it the way suits
them and this will ruin all your efforts. So I suggest we begin from
academic centers and send them a report of what we are doing and also
explain the whole thing about what it is expected to be and what they can
do to help it.
	The second step is doing the same with commercial companies! Yes
commercial companies. Although the only thing they think about, is money
but if we explain the future benefits of cooperating in such a project
and the consequences of the other scenario some of them (but not all)
will give useful help.
	All these are not because they can provide us with good code or with good
ideas but because the society must fully understand the concept of Open
Source and the threats of the opposite side. Also this will make the
field wider for independent developers and tighter for commercials.

        This was my humble idea about the current situation and solutions.
I hope you will warn me if I am wrong and give me a reply in the
list or in my own mail box. There are other things I preferred not
to put ahead in my firstmail.

Yours sincerely,
Mohammad H. Falaki.