Re: [native-lang] Position of Native-Lang and other non-coding parts of the communty [was: New template project]

Hi Kami, *

first .. I welcome the idea of OxygenOffice, as I think, that t is 
importand for us to have ideas that drive us forward.
But I'd like to write som of my thoughts, why OxgenOffice is not that 
welcomned as you might wish. (Not to offend you, but to give you some 
feedback.)


KAMI schrieb:
>
> Charles Schulz írta:
>> Wrt to Kami, it is true that I explained to everybody that I would help
>> him include his works inside OOo. I tried. I tried very hard. In fact,
>> with the 2.0.4 the relevance of a "premium" build of OOo would be much
>> lessened, so I proposed Kami to integrate the OOo process itself: the
>> developers wanted to have somebody care about the templates management
>> (that was before the templates contest) and provide the QA (it is
>> necessary for those as well).
> I still ready to work with you. I doesn't want to work in a separated 
> chapel. I just found sf provide the required resources for work... I 
> am happily help in template management, but I treally don not want to 
> upload and edit html files on one-by-one basis. Is an automated way is 
> planned for it in the near future? It should be the first step for 
> extension/templates/gallery marketplace. Look kde-files.org for idea...

We have a lot people with ideas .. and as said ideas are welcome ;-) But 
what we need is people to implement the ideas. So - the fair step was to 
offer help to establish such a place, not to ask for "someone" to do the 
work befor start contributing.

>
>>  I proposed Kami to work on this and take
>> charge of the templates collection, QA and management. Well he ended up
>> refusing.
> I think it wasn't a refuse. I just want to run OxygenOffice until 
> extension thing not works perfectly. Currently there are nearly half 
> dozen issue that stops me like lack of gallery localizatuion support 
> for UNO packages, gallery related issues, etc. I think I was one of 
> first who made available non code extensions. You can check here:
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170021&package_id=208656 
>
> And no one has held back to make available these packages or a part of 
> them in documentation/extension project. I really want to help you... 
> So you can explain the best way for it.
>>  Apparently having its own stuff on SourceForge was more
>> important for him.
> It is just for development. I think I have never had CVS rights for 
> template related stuffs.

hmm .. 1st: did you ever request developer status at documentation? If 
not - it i obvious,that you never had CVS rights (what indeed would be 
the best way to contribute to the documentation project)

2nd: Branding an own product, promoting it, namit it "professional" 
seems to be much more than "just for development". I think, you are 
doing a good job with OxygenOffice but maybe you are not aware about the 
effects.
As Sophie said - OOo is not a playground. OOo is deployed in 
administrations, companies and is one of the best known OpenSource 
software products. So although you might have the best intentions naming 
your project "premium" or "professional" , this is very unfortunate to 
OpenOffice.org. Why? Just because if there is a "professional/premium" 
product, this discredits the one that has not "professional/premium" in 
it's name. We got questions from users, who asked where to by OOo 
premium, because they only own the non-cost version.
So .. OO Professional is 99% OpenOffice, has some extras (many of them 
are contributions collected at the OOo project) but it seems to be the 
"much better Office". .. very unfortunate :-(

Just as a side note: Your original announcement of OxygenOffice 
mentioned this connection to OOo in the (imho) correct way (based on 
OOo's latest and greates version ;-) ).  Unfortunately this relationship 
to OOo was removed in the German translation (making some people upset 
again). As I know, you are writing to some of the germanophone lists, 
you might ask for translation there.


>>  I do ackowledge however that he agreed to change the
>> name of his bundle and that he put it under the LGPL.
> It was always under LGPL.

And here we come to a real problem. I see several licensing problem in 
your package. You mentioned the yourself at the wiki page. E.g. the 
Cisco icons cannot be distributed under LGPL as long as Cisco does not 
allow alteration. I know, you are working on this .. but as long as this 
is not resolved, it is not correct to say, that the package ist (fully) 
LGPL.


>>  
> Now Extensions are available... This may make things more simple. Also 
> I would like to ask other NLC members to provide template package for 
> their language. This would be a big help for us.
> Firstly I would be happy with FR, IT, TR, KA templates, but others are 
> welcome.

Please read this sentence again and you might see, why people are not 
applauding. You are asking people to contribute materials ... but what 
do you give back?
See - you are including some german templates and documentation. You are 
allowed to do so. But what did we (the germanophone project) got in 
return? I'm really looking for people to care about templates .. care 
about proper licenses, usability of templates .. but we don't find many 
people to do this. Actually I'm doing it on my own (again). So you are 
reusing some of my work.
(As said, you are allowed to do so .. but it is not very encouraging to me)


Anyway .. I've seen you commenting o the extensions-list. I hope, you 
can help to implement the platform we would really need.

André