Re: BoF item 3/14: Outreach



On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Gil Forcada <gforcada gnome org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As I said in previous mails, let this mail be a kickstart for giving
> feedback about the items that are defined on
> https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/Events/GTPBoFGUADEC2012
>
> In this mail please give feedback about the Outreach item.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Gil Forcada


GUADEC 2012 BOF follow-up
https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/Events/GTPBoFGUADEC2012#Outreach

Outreach plan
https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/Outreach

. . .  quoting from link above

Just reaching out to local communities

Talk with marketing team about marketing materials to encourage local
languages to do translations.

If other langs have teams in LibreOffice and KDE, talk about GNOME
translation. This is politically sensitive, because this could look
like poaching. Better to contact translation coordinators and
downstream translators (particularly Ubuntu translators).

. . .  </quote>

There are many good reasons to pursue closer coordination and
cross-polination with the LaunchPad-based Ubuntu L10n community, in
particular.  They are a large community with a wide variety of
languages and they co-host a large number of Gnome originated
packages.  Significant levels of (DL and LP) "dual citizenship"
already exist.

I would like to make a couple of specific proposals about methods that
could be pursued in the outreach effort with regard to the LP-based
Ubuntu L10n community.

1) Provide a DL - LP cross mapping

I suggest the creation of a "LaunchPad co-hosted Release Set" on the
Damned Lies server, similar in function to the "OLPC Release Set" that
was created by Claude Paroz and that I maintain.

http://l10n.gnome.org/releases/olpc/

The purpose of this is to provide a quickly visible set of summary
statistics and quick links to packages that are hosted on both the
Damned Lies server (DL) and Ubuntu LaunchPad (LP).  Ideally, this
release set should be maintained by someone involved in coordinating
Ubuntu translation efforts on LP (at an overall Ubuntu level, not
necessarily at a language-specific level).

What would this accomplish and why is it a win-win?

DL-based localizers (particularly those with an Ubuntu affinity) can
easily prioritize Ubuntu dependencies for completion in their DL work.

LP-based localizers can easily identify opportunities to upstream
their work to DL and thereby reach a larger audience (e.g. other
Gnome-using distros) and leverage their efforts more widely.  This
should particularly appeal to "language loyal" localizers, although
I'm sure the notion of sharing "Gnomey ngoodness" will also motivate
some.

LP-based localizers can benefit from working on the DL master branches
of packages as a means of "pre-localizing" packages that, when
released as stable, will make make their way into LP and Ubuntu.  Even
though the Ubuntu focus may be on an older stable release, by working
on a DL master branch, they are "getting ahead of the game", which
will allow them more time to focus on Ubuntu-specific strings that
change within an Ubuntu release cycle.

I have attached a spreadsheet that is a first pass at mapping Gnome DL
project pages to Ubuntu (Quantal) LP project pages.  I have not done a
drilldown to the specific release level.  I think the focus should be
on master as the issues of version lag are pretty much a wash after a
few cycles as long as you focus on the master branch.  The one
exception is where it looks like LP tracks a Gnome2 version separately
from a Gnome3 version, in those cases, I've left a blank cell
following the Gnome package name in the first column and added both
links in the LP column.

I did this match by scanning:

http://l10n.gnome.org/module/
and
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/+templates

I would welcome it if someone else would review these links and the
spreadsheet to correct any mistakes and add anything I may have missed
in this quick and dirty review.  BTW, this sheet is more-or-less the
start of the "LaunchPad co-hosted Release Set" list.

2) Exchange diplomatic delegations and credentials.

Having a formal (or informal) back-channel for DL coordination team to
LP coordination team communications would be very useful.  This is not
meant to be the only channel of communications and does not replace
filing tickets in each others bugtrackers, etc., but it could be very
useful for planning higher-level joint activities or drawing focused
attention to specific issues of mutual interest.

One such example might be:
To her Excellency the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Empire of
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and outlying islands from the Legation of
the People's Republic of Gnome. "Hey you folks have a lot of African
language projects that don't have glibc locales yet.  Can we work
together to fix that?" Regards and Felicitations. Your Loyal Servant,
etc. etc. etc.

3) Address identifiable language team level opportunities for better
cooperation (specifically, weak uplinks from LP to DL)

I can tell you from looking through the coverage of a few packages on
DL and LP, I can already identify a few languages where it appears
that there is an active LP-based localizer (or team) that have not
been as timely about upstreaming their L10n to DL as would be ideal.
Localizers are free agents and free to do their work with the tool of
their choice, but st the same time they should be no less bound by the
social conventions of FOSS software development and the morays of the
gift-economy it embodies.

Gentle and private reminders (ideally between co-linguist team
leaders) could be made to attempt to encourage the common FOSS
cultural practice of timely upstreaming where the projects are mor
ecomplete on LP than they are on DL.  This will help minimize
duplicated effort.  I will not name names in public, but I may send
private messages to DL language team leaders about contacting their LP
counter-parts where I think it might be merited.

That's all I have for this message, but I would be interested in
hearing what you think of these notions.

cjl

Attachment: Gnome-Launchpad_mapping.ods
Description: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet



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