Re: Import from Launchpad

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Hi Olav,

Today at 15:44, Olav Vitters wrote:

>> Maybe I've should not have used the word 'social'.  I tried to
>> contrast it with 'technical' above, hoping that would clarify it.
>> 
>> Btw, Planet GNOME is not an efficient communication/collaboration
>> mechanism.
>
> I know. However, it was raised directly various times. Perhaps not to
> the right person/team. However, I do think the issue was known.

The issue was known and being handled.  Work-arounds have been put in
place and most teams who have made use of them have found them
sufficient so far (i.e. the problem is that because we didn't
communicate how you should organise your team in the *past*, people
let everybody in, thus causing the issue—now that most teams are
moderated and consisted of reviewers only, and it's a one time job for
people to revert translations to upstream provided one, it's mostly
solved if anyone went through the burden of reverting translations).

We have relied on translation teams to cooperate and coordinate with
upstreams in this process, though.

> E.g. lock 'dutch' for 'GNOME' only. Not the whole of GNOME. Not the
> whole Dutch translations, just the combination.

Understood.  But I've explained this since the very start: doing that
is a technically hard problem and we can't do that right now, nor in
the near future.

> Launchpad is fine for other programs. However, it should provide the
> locking mechanism for a specific language for a project (as said above).
> I think you are saying that it is being worked on. If so, good.

This is the problem I have with the majority of comments.  Everybody
is talking about locking and nothing but the locking.  There are
different solutions to this problem.

So, I will be assuming that this is what GNOME translators are asking
for: "make sure that upstream translations are used whenever they are
better than the ones submitted through Launchpad."

That's something I'd gladly think about solving.  And I am pretty sure
that can be done without 'locking'.

> [..]
>> However, Ubuntu, afaik, strongly encourages people to submit bugs to
>> Launchpad, and bug triagers forward them upstream only if they are
>> really upstream.  Still, Ubuntu has a huge bunch of users who read no
>> documentation, so GNOME ends up with spurious bug reports.  I note
>> again that I am not directly involved in Ubuntu, so I can't tell you
>> how to fix this problem.
>
> I'm just trying to show what impact the current situation has on e.g.
> the Dutch translation team. It is not about where the bug reports are
> filed. It is the bad quality and the impression that a GNOME translation
> team caused it.

It's a two edged sword.  We can either try to give credit to upstream
translators, which is what I think is more important, or we can try to
shield them from everything.

And as I mentioned, the same thing has been happening with any patched
tarball.  People have only mostly learned not to report kernel bugs to
the main kernel development list.  But it still happens: people using
distro-patched kernels report bugs where they shouldn't.

I don't know what I can do to convince you that Ubuntu has been
pushing hard for people to report problems using Launchpad instead of
external bug trackers.

>> I understand that my response was long and that you failed to notice
>> that I said we'll deal with the problem technically as well.  However,
>> it's a complicated one, and it will take time.
>
> Good! :-)
>
> How long do you expect this to be implemented and put into production?

A really long term (we already have agenda for the next few months,
and this one is a really complex bit touching many bits of
infrastructure).  I cannot give any time estimate because we haven't
even discussed or planned this.

Instead of waiting for proper locking, I'd rather use other solutions
to the same problem.

> Some of those patches I can understand. Mandriva only adds the bare
> minimum of patches (probably focusses more on KDE). However, patches are
> sometimes needed.

And the same holds for translations — changes are sometimes needed. ;)

>> problem of any other distribution.  The specific problem of Ubuntu is
>> that they are also patching translations.  This reiterates the same
>> problems in a new context.  So, the problem is that some of those
>> "patches" are bad.  That's something we can work on.  We can't work on
>> the premise that all patches are bad.
>
> Except that for translations it seems like a free for all. Distributions
> are free to change things. However, quality control shouldn't go out the
> window. Plus the people who change stuff should be guided + know what
> they are doing. A terrible translation is worse than no translation at
> all.

This is a problem with how Ubuntu translation was organised (or
disorganised) in the early stages.  It's still far from perfect, and
far from the GNOME level, but we are working with Ubuntu community on
improving that.

> But if it has been proven that the Dutch GNOME team is competent, then
> Launchpad should at one point allow these translations to be locked.

I'd rephrase this: if it has been proven that the Dutch GNOME team is
competent, Launchpad should be able to allow Dutch Ubuntu translators
to maintain the quality of translations on the upstream GNOME level.

> Aside from technical difficulty, is this high on the priority list? I'd
> like to limit any delay only due to technical difficulties.

Since there are different approaches to solving the problem, and we
need to discuss them first, I must admit that it's not even on the
agenda yet (we have strict plans for the next two months).  I'll have
it discussed tomorrow with my team, and then I'll post more details in
the bug report as we come up with any decision and timeframe.

Cheers,
Danilo