FAD Report

[Petr Kovar]

Hi all,

On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:12:31 -0400
Zach Oglesby <oglesbyzm at gmail.com> wrote:

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> The following is a copy of the etherpad notes from the FAD with my notes included. Please provide feedback and ideas.
> 
>  * Write an email to the legal@ list to propose:
>    * copyright attribution be to "Fedora Project contributors, as listed at the following URL: ____
>      * Update the license text on the Fedora publican brand to remove the HOLDER entity and instead have the wiki-link entity
>    * Spot add to Licensing page instructions on how to satisfy the attribution clause of the CC licensing (Sparks by 12  Sep)
>    * Propose how we should attribute back to our contributors (Sparks by 12 Sep)
> 
> We need to figure out how to give proper attribution to contributors and translators but doing so in the doc has lots of challenges. In order to fix this issue we are going to move the working of the license into the publican-fedora package and use a variable for the a wiki link that each doc will include.

Thanks for following up on this, guys!

(...)

>  * Document the translation process? (zoglesby 12 Sep)
>    * Propose change to translation process: that Translators own their translation and publish when ready
>      * Give translators commit and publish rights
>      * Bugs for a document that are against translations will be triaged by the Docs team and assigned to the appropriate translation team
> 
> We are going to start talks with the L10N team about them owning there own translations. This means that they have control of when and what is pushed to the web, and takes the guess work out for the docs team.

I see several problems with this. 

First off, I think that usually only the guide owners know what is the best
time to publish the document. 

Second, the guide owners are supposed to have the best understanding of how
to update translations / POT files against the current content they have
written, and what is the correct process of publishing them. When it comes
to localization, be in the Fedora project or in any other community project,
translators already have to deal with many other complex tasks and
honestly, I'm not entirely sure that the majority of them would be able to
get their new updating and publishing tasks done with Transifex and
Publican, since both tools are quite developer-oriented and certainly not
extremely friendly for less technical people.

And last, but not least, in fact the Fedora translators are already
permitted to own their own translations, in that they can obtain the
access rights and some of them have already done so. Though I'd be a little
bit afraid of it becoming a rule for every translation team and every
translator out there.

Just thought it might be worth sharing some of my concerns here. Surely it
is best to ask the Fedora translators directly and see what they think.

Best,
Petr Kovar