[gnome-cy] A body

[Kevin Donnelly <kevin dotmon com>]

This is just to float some ideas about future steps.  I know everyone is busy 
with getting files translated, so I'm not looking for responses immediately.

I mentioned in the other post trying to get an element of forward planning 
into publicity efforts.  I've also been thinking about the earlier idea of 
doing a Welsh Knoppix thing.  Ideally, we need to do a fair number of these, 
and that, among other things, will mean costs for CD blanks, copying-time, 
bagging-time, and postage.  I would see this as a stepping-stone thing, with 
people using this as a taster for moving on to RH, MDK, SuSE, whatever.

I think it is impossible to do something like this on the scale we need 
without getting some external funding.  Do we therefore need to consider an 
application to one of Lottery bodies, a grant-making trust, or somewhere else 
to get this?  In turn, to do this, don't we need some sort of charitable 
trust to be the vehicle for the application and the use of any funds we do 
get?

I raised this earlier in posts on 23 Feb and 28 Mar, so I won't labour it all 
again here, but those posts set out the sort of things that such a body might 
try to do.  (Another thing is a detailed, considered response to the Bwrdd yr 
Iaith consultation exercise.)

Any funding applications, I think, should focus on costs that voluntary effort 
cannot cover (ie you can't volunteer to do a delivery for the Post Office in 
return for it delivering x CDs for you).  This more or less rules out 
development and translation costs - the only KDE team I know that has had 
some public money is the Slovenian one, and that was only for a professional 
translator to review translations that had been done via voluntary effort.  
There would also be issues about how you would measure translation input - is 
the first suggestion credited, or the emendation of that suggestion, or both?  
I think it's easier to avoid all that, and try to encourage voluntary input 
via Kartouche, and it also avoids any gripes about public money being used to 
fund development of "non-commercial" software (although if there are any good 
arguments to deal with this, I'd be glad to hear them).

Perhaps at some time in the next two months we might have an exchange on this, 
either by email, IRC or (if Dewi can swing it ...?) a North-South 
video-conference.  There is a fair bit of gruntwork involved in moving in 
this direction, and it might take 12 months to start bearing fruit, but it 
seems to me worth considering.

Best wishes

Kevin


















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