Re: Seeking advice on team issues

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad cs toronto edu>]

Thanks a lot Roozbeh for raising the issue.  I think it makes
sense for people to wait until I write down my side of the story
too.  I'll do that before the end of the weekend.

behdad



On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

> I am writing this email because of my frustration with a situation in
> the Persian GNOME team. I am seeking the advice of other people in the
> GNOME project.
>
> The situation is getting on my mind, specially because a dear friend and
> colleague, Behdad Esfahbod, is on the other side of matter. It recently
> got much worth because he checked in a translation by himself to the
> GNOME CVS, without confirmation from me or other reviewers of the
> Persian team (that at the same time removed a copyright line, which made
> me more frustrated).
>
> I can't speak for Behdad, but I can explain some of the processes that
> has led to his objections, according to my interpretation of things.
>
> To understand these, you should know that I became the Persian
> translation coordinator only because I was the first translator (and the
> only translator for a while), not because I have been elected or
> anything. But nobody has challenged my role either, as far as I can
> tell.
>
> You should also know that Iran is not a signatory of any of the
> international copyright conventions, but has an national copyright law
> only protecting works first created in Iran.
>
> 1) Originally in the project, because of my worries over the copyright
> status of things (which was mostly based on my sad experience with the
> Persian KDE project) and my incomplete (but improving) understanding of
> the copyright law, we had random policies imposed by me on the project.
>
> I used FSF as the copyright holder. This is the first Persian
> translation ever checked in to the GNOME CVS:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.1
>
> Later, I decided to ask (require?) every volunteer translator to sign
> the famous FSF copyright disclaimer from the Translation Project and
> send it to the FSF offices in paper before I check in any translation
> from her or him to the GNOME CVS.
>
> We used FSF copyrights for a while, but after a while found that
> according to Iranian law, FSF will most probably be unable to use the
> protection of the Iranian copyright law, which would make the work
> practically public domain. I then decided to switch the copyright to the
> FarsiWeb project, which was then a non-profit project by Sharif
> University of Technology and Science and Arts Foundation. This was not a
> problem since again almost all contributors were members of the FarsiWeb
> project. We kept pointing project outsiders to the FSF disclaimer, but
> changed the copyright of the existing files to the FarsiWeb project in
> new CVS check-ins:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.26
>
> Later, we found that since that project is no legal entity and cannot be
> well-defined, it is not entitled to hold copyright over anything. At the
> same time, the university and the foundation had pushed the FarsiWeb
> project to become a spin-off company, which we founded in September 2003
> (Behdad is a co-founder). We then transferred of rights to work we had
> created to this company, and we started to use the company copyright. We
> assumed that we can keep the work copyrighted in both Iran and outside
> Iran by using a double copyright line, one for the company and one for
> FSF:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.39
>
> After a while, I found ways to recruit people to do GNOME translation,
> including hiring a professional translator, Meelad Zakaria, to work on
> GNOME translation. After a period of his working on GNOME, he was
> becoming frustrated so we started to hold by-invitation translation
> parties in Sharif University campus. It was a great success and has led
> to activation of possible contributors (or them understanding that
> Persian l10n is not really that easy). During these parties, several
> friends and almost all company-employees contributed translations, which
> were later reviewed and checked in to the GNOME CVS. It was with these
> parties that we finally passed the first 50% frontier. Every person
> participating in these translation parties that was not a company
> employee has signed a copyright disclaimer in Persian, with a similar
> text to the FSF translation disclaimer, but additionally explicitly
> letting us transfer the rights to the FSF or any other organization we
> feel appropriate. Like the FSF disclaimer, we mentioned that this
> applies to translations of "freely redistributable software programs".
>
> In my reading of the FSF disclaimer, which I have personally signed, it
> applies only to translations that we provide to the FSF itself (i.e.
> putting an FSF copyright notice on its header), but Behdad has claimed
> that we the people who have signed that disclaimer "CANNOT claim
> copyright" on any of our translations anymore. I am assuming that he
> claims every translation of a free software program I will do in my life
> after signing that disclaimer will be copyrighted by the FSF. But I
> guess I may not speak for him. An email of his about the matter is here:
>
> http://lists.sharif.edu/pipermail/farsi/2005-April/000328.html
>
> But all this has an allegedly dark side. People who contacted us over
> the Internet or did not reside in Iran had a harder time contributing to
> the Persian translation effort than those working in the same room with
> me or those participating in our translation parties. We somehow needed
> to establish trust over email, which was not that easy.
>
> Some people have wanted to impose their own Persian idiolect in their
> translations and were offended when their translation were reviewed,
> some of them considered that an attack against their personality. Others
> left the project during times of inactivity, when some of their emails
> were left unanswered or when I was foolishly waiting for a glossary from
> the Persian Academy. Even Behdad has not yet passed the process of the
> review of his work on gucharmap  (more about this later), which was done
> at a time that he had moved outside Iran.
>
> In short, only one contributor outside of FarsiWeb and translation
> parties has had his work accepted for the GNOME Persian translation,
> Hedayat Vatankhah:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gconf-editor/po/fa.po?rev=HEAD
>
> That is in comparison to about twenty contributors whose work has been
> checked in to the GNOME CVS, reviews of which was mostly done through
> communications by email or in person or in translation parties.
>
> Behdad objects to the current system, and claims that I have discouraged
> some very good potential contributors by acting in certain ways. He has
> also suggested that I am trying to create a copyright monopoly for the
> company using these explanations as an excuse, by forcing contributors
> to disclaim their rights in Iran or assigning them to the company.
>
> He has also mentioned that me and the two other most active contributors
> to the Persian translation effort have formed a conspiracy. I assume
> that he believes it is a conspiracy that is helping me to do these wrong
> doings. These two active contributors are Elanz Sarbar (my wife) and
> Meelad Zakaria (a friend). Both are colleagues and FarsiWeb employees.
>
> That was one story line. I appreciate any kind of advice about that.
>
> 2) The other is about a mailing list. We have not had an official
> mailing list for the GNOME Persian localization project. There has been
> a *closed* mailing list with open archives that was historically used
> for communication between some selected people interested in Persian
> localization, mostly concentrating on KDE at its early days. Since the
> list resided on my server, and I did not see a need for a separate GNOME
> Persian list, it has also been used for some of the communications
> related to the GNOME translation into Persian. It has also been used as
> an address for the Persian team in the Language-Team headers of the PO
> files, but not the GTP Teams page or the page linked from it. The list
> currently contains about one-third of the GNOME Persian contributors,
> and even includes people who have (to my knowledge) never contributed
> Persian translations to free software.
>
> A while ago, for some reason, I removed an email from Behdad from the
> archives of that mailing list, which resided on a machine for which I am
> responsible to Sharif University for. While I don't consider that list a
> part of the GNOME project, Behdad has mentioned that he supposes that it
> is implied from a Language-Team header in GNOME Persian translations
> that this is a mailing list of the GNOME Project, and that "The act of
> removing messages from the archive for personal reasons is not tolerated
> in the GNOME project."
>
> I am seeking your advice again, specially if there is such a policy
> about not removing emails from archives in GNOME, that a translation
> team must have a mailing list, or that an email address mentioned at the
> Language-Team header would count as a part of the GNOME project.
>
> 3) The third matter is about internal procedures and policies. In short,
> the team's current practice has been to translate verbs that appear on
> buttons not to their imperative forms in Persian, but to either
> infinitive or passive forms. In my opinion, that is the current practice
> in Persian software, and had been devised mostly because the users in
> the Iranian culture would assume commands printed in buttons would be
> towards them, not by them to the computer. In my opinion, that is also
> because Persian is a more "polite" language, more like German than
> English, which means that a singular form may look very informal but a
> plural form may be confusing sometimes.
>
> So it has been our existing policy to do that this way, and all the
> checked in translations have either used the infinitive form or the
> passive form, based on the context.
>
> Behdad, in his first translation which he wanted to contribute to the
> Persian GNOME, tried to change that practice. This was after he thought
> he may check in his updates to the Persian translations without any kind
> of review to the GNOME CVS, which I then explained to him and reverted.
>
> The discussion about his suggested change was fruitful to some degree
> and was joined by others, but we could not reach any kind of agreement.
> I failed to agree with his points, and he insisted on his opinion. The
> discussion was discontinued without reaching any kind of conclusion, and
> the gucharmap translation which he has provided was not checked in.
>
> This was before the translation parties and the new much more active
> shape of things. During the parties, we did not assign gucharmap to
> anybody, and Meelad emailed Behdad a few times with a request to submit
> his latest work, so that it could be more informally reviewed so we can
> get his work into GNOME.
>
> During a time that we had Internet connection problems on 2005-11-05, he
> emailed me and Meelad personally and said:
>
> "I finished the gucharmap translation based on all the responses
> on the list in early 2005.  I believe it should be committed as
> is.  Any further discussion should go to the list.  Since
> tarballs are due in a few hours, I will go on and commit before
> making a tarball if it's not already committed."
>
> That did not include the change we had requested for the verb on the
> "Find" button, was removing a copyright notice, and may also have other
> problems (but I have not checked it in detail yet). But before we had a
> chance to review his work (and before we were even able to read his
> email), he went and checked that in to the GNOME CVS about 33 hours
> later, without my confirmation or any other active reviewer's.
>
> I don't know if there is a GTP policy against this, but the current
> policy of the Persian team (originally imposed by myself), does not
> allow such acts.
>
> Later, when Meelad reviewed Behdad's work, I went and committed that to
> the CVS immediately (although it could have benefited from a second
> review by me, I did not consider that necessary), and since I thought
> that that translation which removed a copyright line was included in the
> GNOME 2.12 release (which could have been the only reason Behdad had
> committed the file without any review), went and emailed Noah and the
> release team to re-release gucharmap with the new translation (that
> included the copyright line and a fix to the disputed message, among
> other things). But Behdad reverted my commit (which contained several
> improvements to his translations), only restoring the removed copyright
> line:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gucharmap/po/fa.po
>
> I did not touch that again, in fear of getting this into a
>
> He has mentioned that "I have been patient enough to
> read and follow tens of email communication, all for contributing
> translations to gucharmap.  In return, I expect that any change
> to the translations of that module pass through the same process."
>
> I have two problems with that: first of all, he has only been patient,
> but not accepting some of the comments, and second, I don't assume that
> a process that has proved to be frustrating should be repeated for
> updating his translation.
>
> While I understand that he is now a co-maintainer of gucharmap, I don't
> consider him having the final say about Persian translation matters in
> that package, and I don't consider he has a right to revert
> contributions or impose policies.
>
> That was the third story. And the most important point for which I wish
> to ask your advice. What would you recommend? Do you think somebody with
> commit rights to the GNOME CVS (or a package co-maintainer for the
> matter) has the right to commit his translations to GNOME without (and
> against) the approval of the coordinator or the translation team?
>
> The final notes:
>
> Behdad had warned me in a personal communication (which I am reproducing
> without his explicit permission) that:
>
> "This is my last warning to you, the very next time I see you
> making rules of yourself or anything when it comes to Persian
> translation of GNOME, I don't wait a minute.  You know what I
> mean."
>
> In our previous private communications, he has mentioned his frustration
> over the issues I mentioned above, and I had promised to try to solve
> them, and has provided a deadline for me to try to solve them by the
> time or he would take the matter to this mailing list.
>
> But I, after thinking about the matters and seeing that I may not be
> able to solve issues that I don't necessarily agree that are issues and
> have been probably created because of possible shortcomings of my
> actions, I decided to write to this mailing list myself.
>
> I wish to apologize for the very long email, but this may be the only
> way of ending this frustrating debate. I also apologize to Behdad, as a
> dear friend and colleague, in case I have frustrated him or I am
> continuing to do so. I consider all this to be for the good of the GNOME
> Persian translation effort, and I believe Behdad considers the same.
> While I deny forming any kind of conspiracy about GNOME translation, I
> agree that I had made some mistakes, but I insist that they had been
> because I had believed they would result in better Persian translations
> in GNOME.
>
> Looking forward for your constructive comments,
> Roozbeh
>
>
>
>

--behdad
http://behdad.org/