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

[Arash Zeini]

Dear Hossein,

While I may agree with none, many or all of your points, I would like not 
to go too much into detail here.

I think part of the open source attitude is not to care too much about 
others. We do what we like or believe in and hence we do it. I think this 
is source for enough inspiration and will to work.

So let's not waste too much time on these things and get to work. So 
welcome to the FarsiKDE project.

What do you want to do? How do you think you can help?

Greetings,
Arash

On Thursday 21 August 2003 17:28, Hossein wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kde-i18n-fa mailing list
> Kde-i18n-fa at mail.kde.org
> http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-i18n-fa

-- 
The FarsiKDE Project
www.farsikde.org