On 02/21/2011 02:40 PM, Ricky Zhou wrote:
First, let me say - I'm happy as long as the work gets done to make a Transifex instance usable and maintained for translators.
Thanks Ricky :)
But one question - can you quantify exactly what we lose with switching to transifex.net?
As I see it, you answer your own question further down your post. We lose control of the instance. Whether or not the Fedora project ever exercises that control is a different matter.
Some people might see this as a purely theoretical distinction, but it's a distinction that exists at the very heart of Free software. With the exception of packages that I'm involved in maintaining, I have very rarely delved into the code or modified the code of the Free software that I use every day. However, by choosing Free software, I retain the ability to do these things if and when I choose to do so.
To me, this situation is analogous, and it's important to me that Fedora retains this freedom. Freedom means having the power to do something, not that you necessarily do that thing.
More pragmatically, needing to move translation files between transifex.net and our repos seems to me like an unfortunate hurdle to translations in Fedora. This is probably not a substantial disadvantage to relatively stable software packages where there is little change from version to version, but would be felt more in documentation where string changes are more frequent.
I am really very sorry that Red Hat has not stepped into the gap earlier to offer support for this part of the infrastructure and that the situation had to reach this crisis point. Nevertheless, the offer is out there now. If the L10N team accepts our help, we will of course need to put a plan in place to ensure that we provide some ongoing support (as we do with Bugzilla) -- at least until if and when somebody else in the community develops an interest in maintaining the instance.
Thanks again for the vote of confidence; it means a lot to me. I'm not deluded enough to imagine that this will be an easy task! :)
Cheers Rudi