Re: [cle-devel] Re: fonts and patents
Hi Richard!
On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 06:55:16PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Yes, indeed, and Kudos to Arphic and also to CLE, the Chinese Linux
> Extension Team in Taiwan
>
> Can you tell me how to contact this team? I would like to talk with
> them, and explain to them that what they are extending is the GNU
> system, not Linux. This work has nothing to do with Linux at all.
(Oops, I hope I didn't open a can of worms. ;-)
You are already talking to the CLE! :-) Notice I added a Cc: to
"cle-devel@linux.org.tw" in my previous posting? Your reply had already
appeared on the CLE Development list where you can contact all the active
developers.
Disclaimer: I am not a member of the CLE Development Team. I am more like
an observer who "leeches" off CLE's efforts and slowly ports
them to Debian Chinese. ;-) (My involvement with debian-chinese
has been minimal, and others have contributed greatly to
debian-chinese in recent months). The following is only my
personal opinion and does not represent those of CLE or the
Debian Chinese Project.
In my opinion, they are indeed extending the "Linux", although not just
Linux, as you correctly stated. Their efforts have many fronts, e.g. adding
the Chinese codepage to the Linux kernel, internationalizing many programs
(e.g. GNU system, glibc, X11, GNOME, KDE, etc.), currently with the focus of
packaging these as RPMs as add on for Red Hat 5.x and 6.x, as well as
forwarding them upstream (e.g. Chinese locale, translations, i18n fixes for
GNOME, XFree86, glibc2, rxvt, vim, etc.) These RPMs have also been ported to
SuSE and Mandrake, and the fruit of CLE is also reaped by the Debian Chinese
Project. (We ported some RPMs to .debs, and in other cases, Chinese support
has been submitted by the CLE to upstream, so for example the Chinese menu
in gnumeric automagically appeared in Debian without any effort from us in
debian-chinese. :-)
I see your concern, but I want to point out that their work does have
*something* to do with Linux. They (directly or indirectly) contribute to
the Chinese Linux Documentation Project (CLDP); they patched the Linux
kernel to support Chinese filenames; they started on Red Hat Linux; their
fruits have been reaped (or sometimes, saidly, exploited) by many Chinese
Linux distributions (e.g. ported to SuSE, Mandrake, Debian GNU/Linux;
included in XTeam Linux, TurboLinux Chinese; exploited by Tatung Linux 2000,
more on this later.) Yes, I know, I should have said "GNU/Linux" throughout
instead of just saying "Linux". Unfortunately, most Chinese people and most
distributions in China/Taiwan simply uses "Linux", just like the rest of the
world.
I agree that 90% or more of the work CLE does is related to the GNU System
(including X11), and indeed, if CLE had been fully ported to Debian, it
would work just fine in Debian GNU/Hurd (or even on "Red Hat GNU/Hurd" if
Red Hat ever intends to release one. :-) And of course, CLE releases its
work under the GNU GPL. So, perhaps the CLE would be better named as "CGE"
or "CGLE", as the Chinese GNU/Linux Extension Project. It could create
major confusion though, as the name "CLE" has been around for two (?) years
and is quite well known among Chinese (GNU/)Linux communities. So,
ultimately, it would be up to the CLE developers to decide what to do. :-)
Oh, as a sidenote, about "Tatung Linux 2000": Tatung took CLE's code, made
some modifications, and released their "ultimate Linux solution for Chinese
users", Tatung Linux 2000, a few months ago. Yet, if I understand
correctly, Tatung gave absolutely no credit to CLE in their press releases,
and as of today, after repeated requests from the CLE Team, Tatung still
hasn't released their modifications/sources to the GPL'ed code. The CLE
Team had indeed contemplated a lawsuit against Tatung if Tatung continues to
be irresponsible. Alas, CLE is a small volunteer group and is often no
match against large companies like Tatung, and as such, CLE's efforts have
often been exploited, not unlike how SUN has exploited Blackdown's Java
porting efforts. Now that you are here, if you have time, I wonder if you
can help them out negotiating with Tatung, and more importantly, to uphold
the conditions in the GNU GPL.
I've better stop talking. To Richard and to the CLE Team: Have fun! ;-)
Anthony
--
Anthony Fok Tung-Ling Civil and Environmental Engineering
foka@ualberta.ca, foka@debian.org University of Alberta, Canada
anthony_fok@catholic.org Keep smiling! *^_^*
Come visit Our Lady of Victory Camp -- http://come.to/olvc
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