L10N migration to transifex.net

[Ruediger Landmann]

On 02/21/2011 02:40 PM, Ricky Zhou wrote:
>
> First, let me say - I'm happy as long as the work gets done to make
> a Transifex instance usable and maintained for translators.

Thanks Ricky :)

> But one question - can you quantify exactly what we lose with switching to
> transifex.net?

As I see it, you answer your own question further down your post. We 
lose control of the instance. Whether or not the Fedora project ever 
exercises that control is a different matter.

Some people might see this as a purely theoretical distinction, but it's 
a distinction that exists at the very heart of Free software. With the 
exception of packages that I'm involved in maintaining, I have very 
rarely delved into the code or modified the code of the Free software 
that I use every day. However, by choosing Free software, I retain the 
ability to do these things if and when I choose to do so.

To me, this situation is analogous, and it's important to me that Fedora 
retains this freedom. Freedom means having the power to do something, 
not that you necessarily do that thing.

More pragmatically, needing to move translation files between 
transifex.net and our repos seems to me like an unfortunate hurdle to 
translations in Fedora. This is probably not a substantial disadvantage 
to relatively stable software packages where there is little change from 
version to version, but would be felt more in documentation where string 
changes are more frequent.

I am really very sorry that Red Hat has not stepped into the gap earlier 
to offer support for this part of the infrastructure and that the 
situation had to reach this crisis point. Nevertheless, the offer is out 
there now. If the L10N team accepts our help, we will of course need to 
put a plan in place to ensure that we provide some ongoing support (as 
we do with Bugzilla) -- at least until if and when somebody else in the 
community develops an interest in maintaining the instance.

Thanks again for the vote of confidence; it means a lot to me. I'm not 
deluded enough to imagine that this will be an easy task! :)

Cheers
Rudi