Re: Deactivated languages
On Thu, Nov 16, 2006 at 05:32:31PM +1030, Clytie Siddall wrote:
> On 15/11/2006, at 4:32 PM, Christian Perrier wrote:
> >- Status of de-activated languages:
long list of languages dropped ...
>
> This is sad. :(
Indeed. I do not know any other Free software project which does this.
It also violates many paradigmas known in the Free and Open world such
as "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers." (Eric
S. Raymond's “The Cathedral and The Bazaar”) (because these languages
are released never), "We will make the best system we can, so that free
works will be widely distributed and used", "We will be guided by the
needs of our users and the free software community." (Debian Social
Contract) ...
This behaviour is a beastly shame and I always prefer other projects if
I have to update my work and I'm short of time.
I really, really cannot believe that it's OK to ignore useful und
non-destructive work from people helping to partipiate in Debian.
Maybe it't time to open a release critical bug report to this issue ...
> What do you think would be the best way to publicize the plight of
> these languages in Debian, so translators from other projects might
> come to the rescue, if they have time?
Why should other people work on these issues? Probably they do not even
know that help is needed because they do not know that someone started
already a translation which just needs to be updated, reviewed. There
are many people who do not try to start such an attempt (by reading
documention, maybe by refining i18n tasks) and who just want to
improve existing stuff by sending a small patch instead of becoming a
new maintainer.
I would definitively not suggest translators to start a new Debian
installer translation! Why, so that it can be ignored?
And the reasons for dropping languages?
* Avoiding outdated/obsolete translations? No, not using PO format!
* Saving memory? No, we could drop French for this or provide a new
infrastructure which just ships compressed PO files and creates
.mo files on the fly (maybe also dynamically loaded from the network
or a CD). It would not save a lot but a few hundreds kilobytes ...
* To force people learning other languages (English)? Probably ...
* To support testing these languages? Ahm no, this requires the opposite.
* It was requested by many developers or users? Haha!
I remember only one reason brought up by Frans and really not more:
To be able to blackmail translators.
Yep, this is Debian. Lets sue and blackmail others, it makes fun!
If this also negatively affects ten thousends of other users, who cares?
How about removing Debian Installer from Debian until all bugs (or lets
say 90% which is maybe also the used rate to drop languages) are fixed
in it?
PS: Frans, in your last mail to this issue (many months ago) you just
wrote that you do not want to reply to me until I calm down. This is not
necessary. I'm really able to participate in serious discussions but the
problem is there there was *never* such an (public) discussion and never
good reasons for this decision.
PS2: Maybe it's not clear to everyone my this mail contains again a
little bit sarcasm. Just in case you didn't noticed it or want to use it
as an excuse to not deal with this issue ...
Jens
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