Localization work, evangelism
Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> writes:
> A first step would be some localization work. Filipino (fil) recently
> became listed in ISO-639 and several languages among those spoken in
English was the language of instruction in all the schools I attended,
and translation of computer terms using either phonetically adapted
words (kompyuter) or deeper Filipino (I don't even remember what the
word is) don't really mirror common usage. That said, many cellphones
have localized Tagalog menus, and if people are interested in putting
together Fil localizations, I don't think it'll be a complete waste of
time.
The Philippine Linux Users Group and various regional groups answer
questions in local dialects, although for the mostly-Manila PLUG,
posts are usually in English. That said, the provinces lag behind
Manila in terms of computer science education (except for Cebu, which
in some respects is actually ahead), and that's what I want to address
during/after my PhD (err, haven't started on my MS yet, so that'll take a
while).
---
As this is debian-women, after all, I guess I should talk about how
we're coming along in terms of gender...
Many universities have active open source communities, and I'm glad to
say we have a number of bright and vocal female Linux users even among
the lower years. Microsoft programming environments and
single-platform games still dominate the market, but we're seeing a
slow but steady increase in the number people with multi-platform
skills and enough passion about the subject to want to use great
tools. ;) (Which has led to very interesting debates on our list...)
We saw a drastic drop in CS enrollment, though, both male and female.
Perhaps the growing popularity of call centers contributed to that.
Hmmm... Although that means most of the people taking CS now are
probably not just in it for the money, it would also have been nice to
see if we could sway the undecided ones. We've been both lucky and
unlucky that many high school curriculums include programming. Some
people discover they like it a lot. Others get turned off by
poorly-structured exercises that require little (or too much) thought.
---
Promoting Debian in the Philippines needn't start with localization.
debian-edu might be a good place to begin. Knoppix has also been very
useful for advocacy. One of our government research institutes
produces a Linux distribution called Bayanihan
(http://www.bayanihan.gov.ph). Basing the distro on Knoppix and thus
Debian has been discussed on the PLUG mailing list, and I might be
able to help out with that when I get back.
I'm also interested in encouraging people to get into development.
Open source development really opened up a lot of opportunities for
me, and I want to help people get into it. Considering that I'm a
relative newbie compared to all of you, I suspect I'm in for some
amazing experiences! =)
People have kindly given me the opportunity to participate in
projects, attend and present at conferences, and teach computer
science. I am glad to know so many people helping other people realize
they can make a contribution, no matter how small.
In terms of promoting Debian and Linux in the Philippines, we're
working on the user advocacy level (again, Knoppix has been great),
but I'd like to eventually get more people into documentation,
development, and other contributions to the world-wide community.
--
Sacha Chua <sacha@free.net.ph> - open source geekette
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, making computer science education fun
wearable computing, personal information management
http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C
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