Re: Evolution 2.0 and GNOME 2.6

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Sat, 2004-01-31 at 13:32, Danilo Segan wrote:
> Modules have already been announced.  Translators have already devoted
> their time to translate Evolution, because it's a big component of
> what was supposed to be Gnome 2.6 D&DP (it itself amounts to around
> 17% of translations, which is HUGE!).

GNOME's quality control means that there is always a risk that a module
might be punted or reverted to a previous version.
 
> With this step, lot of those who don't have much resources will now
> suffer: their chances of getting into "supported" list of languages
> are now much worse, if they spent the time between the Murray's
> announcement and today translating Evolution (and nobody even
> bothered to let gnome-i18n list know about the withdrawal).

The translations are not lost. People will still get a lot of benefit
from them, and it will help greatly with GNOME 2.8. It's a shame if
people's only GNOME 2.6 translators credits would be for Evolution, but
I hope that people are translating evolution because they want to use it
in their language rather than to see their name in a list. 

> What this actually means?  It means that they'll be discouraged, some
> may even give up.  This is bad, it hurts the community and it hurts
> the Gnome project.

I understand, and I think motivation is very important, but it's not the
most imporant thing and this is not the most imporant way to motivate
people.

> The work is not really "lost", but the goal which has driven some of
> the translators is now surely harder to achieve.
> 
> 
> So, what I ask for here:  establish a policy that any significant
> module (in terms of work for other Gnome subprojects, such as
> documentation, UI review, translation, etc.) must guarantee not to
> withdraw once final module list is announced.

No way. We must have quality control. For instance, Totem+gstreamer
wasn't ready so it wasn't in GNOME 2.4, and that' good.

>   This will probably
> make maintainers think twice before really dedicating themselves to
> be in the "official" Gnome, and something like this won't happen
> again. (Though, I don't expect us to have any such large-scale module
> proposed in the near future, comparable to Evolution.)
> 
> Free Software development goes around such rewards such as
> mentioning a language in the Release Notes for the Gnome D&DP. And to
> deserve that, one must translate at least 80% of a desktop -- now
> it's probably pretty clear what effect this can have.

-- 
Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>