Hello Dmitris,
In one paragraph, you say that Fedora is free to move to another
platform, and in another, you list the extra features Transifex has that
can keep Fedora locked in.
Basically, it's exactly the same strategy that GMail/Drive is using, or
that Bitkeeper used in the past...
You can check-out any time you like,
but you can never leave!
Tools are *not* just tools. Relying on superior tools that are
graciously provided, but can be taken away at any time, can be quite
dangerous.
Your arguments that Zanata might not be the best solution are valid.
(Though your own "What does the roadmap look like" question might be
relevant here.)
It has been mentioned on this list that sharing the translations between
multiple sites, so the "pragmatists" can get their features and the
"purists" can keep their freedom, is not feasible. This makes me sad.
Why can't Transifex or Zanata be just frontends for the data, sort of
like Github is for Git?
(Sorry for top-posting; my reply reads better in one block.)
On 07/17/2014 12:17 PM, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
Hey all,
I'll share some of my thoughts at this point.
*
*
*
*
*_GIST_*
* _Freedom_ is more than just access to a tarball. What kinds of
Freedom is Fedora enjoying and giving up by using a platform like
Transifex or GitHub?
o What is the _Board's position_ about using non-open-source but
open-friendly services? How much should we sacrifice to only run
open-source on our servers?
* Research thoroughly all possible solutions and find out what exactly
we'll be sacrificing and gaining. _Pootle_ is much more trusted than
Zanata.
* Ask all key Fedora L10n people. Past and current.
* Any switch should be led by a technical Fedora localization person.
* The goal should be to make Fedora L10n a successful project. The
tools are just tools. The most important community features in
Transifex have not been used.
*_BACKGROUND_*
My contributions to Fedora nowadays are limited to supporting the L10n
project with our Transifex instance. I used to be a member of the Fedora
Board in the past. I see there's still the title "Fedora Localization
Lead" next to my name, but I suppose that's mostly because no one else
took the role. Today I basically make sure the community has what they
need from Transifex. I trust Piotr Drąg (raven) for any L10n leadership
questions I have.
Today a decision is being brewed on the basis that Transifex is not
open-source. As I mentioned, this is a discussion which needed to
happen. But I find the way it's being discussed disappointing to all the
years of hard work many individuals have put to establish a successful
L10n platform for Fedora (including my own). Many people in Fedora (and
Transifex) have _invested /*man years*/ to make this work_. We haven't
even discussed "what are the key things we need from our L10n platform"?
Following are my thoughts. I'm writing these with an effort to wear my
Fedora L10n hat as much as possible. But the POV does also include my
roles as Transifex's CEO, Fedora's Localization Infrastructure Lead for
the past 6 years, and as one of the most experienced people on
open-source localization.
*_ON FREEDOM_*
When I was young I was looking at freedom in a different way. I was more
an open source zealot than today. I cared mostly about openness of the
code. It didn't matter if there was only one engineer hacking on the
code. What mattered was the license and little more.
Gradually I started realizing one of the reasons I loved Fedora was that
it valued highly quality and community participation. It valued
relationships, productivity, happiness, innovation. We valued
meritocracy more than democracy. Succeeding as a distributions was more
than just having the sources of packages.
_I'm not a fan of the spin put on Freedom in this discussion_. Fedora is
free to use Transifex forever. It's free to export all data at any point
(including all past translations and all the history of the translations
so far) to move to another platform. And it was free to use real people
from our team working on improving the platform constantly and adding
new features. I've met a lot of people in Fedora. The smartest ones knew
very well that _Freedom is not a one-colored attribute_.
*_MIGRATING_*
Migrating from one platform to another will have _major costs_. I led
the original migration from Elvis
<
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archive:L10N/Tools/Plans> to Tx. It
required many meetings with stakeholders, research, experiments. In the
end, _it costed us more than half our translators_.
Assuming the Freedom discussion is resolved and the benefits of the
migration outweigh the costs. If I were leading this (and did not have a
vested interest in one platform...), the last thing I'd want, is to go
through the trouble of migrating, only to find out 5 key things we need
are missing. _Zero research was done_ on the available tools out there
and how they stack with Transifex. Here are examples of research done by
other projects which came across my attention: One
<
http://www.worddelights.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/developer-side-com...;,
Two
<
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqevw3Q-ErDUdFgzT3VNVXQxd095...;.
Ask the Transifex team itself to tell us how they compare to the other
platforms on all key areas. Cover solutions like Pootle which are
developed in a very open matter. Put in a spreadsheet and compare
thoroughly.
This is responsible project management 101.
*_ZANATA_*
Those who have been around a while saw the Zanata push from the Red Hat
teams coming with mathematical precision. Even when Transifex was being
fully developed as open source, Red Hat decided to develop Zanata in
parallel instead of investing in Transifex. This has always struck me as
mind-boggling, given that Transifex was born in Fedora's arms and
quickly became the most popular open-source localization platform.
It is all in good spirit and competition is good. I am holding no grudge
against Zanata. In fact, the Zanata team's efforts to grab Fedora in the
past has pushed Tx to innovate fast.
Having said this...
In terms of Freedom, out of all the localization platforms out there,
and given what I've seen the past years, Zanata is developed in one of
the least open ways. Which open-source projects are using Zanata? On
zanata.org <
http://zanata.org/> I can see a bunch of test projects, a
few Red Hat documentation ones and JBoss
<
https://translate.jboss.org/> (also Red Hat's). Which other projects
have installed their own Zanata server and how many words are they
translating?
_Pootle is a much more openly developed and widely accepted platform_.
The leads (Dwayne and Friedel) are true open-sourcers, their team is
presenting in many major open-source conferences, they're trusted by
many large open-source projects
<
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/live_servers> (Mozilla,
Open Office), proprietary ones (Evernote, Grooveshark, Rdio) and their
feature list <
http://pootle.translatehouse.org/discover.html> is
amazing. At FOSDEM I'll go out for drinks with Friedel.
When there are tools like Pootle out there, why on Earth would Fedora
even consider Zanata? _Where is the research and comparison between the
options we have?_
*_TRANSIFEX_*
Transifex has 20+ people working full-time on the platform. A big chunk
of our time is invested on open-source, community projects
<
https://www.transifex.com/customers/open-source/>. There are projects
on Tx with as many as 1 Billion words being translated by 14.000 people.
Joomla
<
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tnaypyaylxnausr/Screenshot%202014-07-17%2013.11...
has
2.7K translators contributing on 250 projects.
If the goal is to have a _vibrant and successful Fedora Localization
Project_, then there are so many things to be done which make the "which
tool" discussion, quite frankly, stupid. Here are a couple:
* Use Transifex's Reports
<
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o4htl010ieo38iw/Screenshot%202014-07-17%2012.40...
to constantly recognize our most active translators. Send them a
t-shirt or even simply mention them in the release notes.
* Nurture teams
<
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3dtubts36oxhk1q/Screenshot%202014-07-17%2012.46...
by identifying inactive members and refreshing them.
* Help community members prioritize
<
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5xbmbc2m1elmcva/Screenshot%202014-07-17%2012.49...
which projects to translate first and remove old content.
Do we want a successful community L10n project? These are the things we
should be discussing. And these are some of the things the Transifex
team is investing on. "What does the roadmap look like" is a key
question for the research on which tool to choose (which never happened).
*_ENDING THOUGHTS_*
As a Fedora contributor, I'm expecting a discussion for such an
important topic to have higher responsibility than the one I've seen so
far. This is an extremely important topic which has no place for
hastiness or egos.
I'd be happy to help and wear my Fedora hat.
-d