Thanks a lot Roozbeh for raising the issue. I think it makes sense for people to wait until I write down my side of the story too. I'll do that before the end of the weekend.
behdad On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Roozbeh Pournader wrote: > I am writing this email because of my frustration with a situation in > the Persian GNOME team. I am seeking the advice of other people in the > GNOME project. > > The situation is getting on my mind, specially because a dear friend and > colleague, Behdad Esfahbod, is on the other side of matter. It recently > got much worth because he checked in a translation by himself to the > GNOME CVS, without confirmation from me or other reviewers of the > Persian team (that at the same time removed a copyright line, which made > me more frustrated). > > I can't speak for Behdad, but I can explain some of the processes that > has led to his objections, according to my interpretation of things. > > To understand these, you should know that I became the Persian > translation coordinator only because I was the first translator (and the > only translator for a while), not because I have been elected or > anything. But nobody has challenged my role either, as far as I can > tell. > > You should also know that Iran is not a signatory of any of the > international copyright conventions, but has an national copyright law > only protecting works first created in Iran. > > 1) Originally in the project, because of my worries over the copyright > status of things (which was mostly based on my sad experience with the > Persian KDE project) and my incomplete (but improving) understanding of > the copyright law, we had random policies imposed by me on the project. > > I used FSF as the copyright holder. This is the first Persian > translation ever checked in to the GNOME CVS: > > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.1 > > Later, I decided to ask (require?) every volunteer translator to sign > the famous FSF copyright disclaimer from the Translation Project and > send it to the FSF offices in paper before I check in any translation > from her or him to the GNOME CVS. > > We used FSF copyrights for a while, but after a while found that > according to Iranian law, FSF will most probably be unable to use the > protection of the Iranian copyright law, which would make the work > practically public domain. I then decided to switch the copyright to the > FarsiWeb project, which was then a non-profit project by Sharif > University of Technology and Science and Arts Foundation. This was not a > problem since again almost all contributors were members of the FarsiWeb > project. We kept pointing project outsiders to the FSF disclaimer, but > changed the copyright of the existing files to the FarsiWeb project in > new CVS check-ins: > > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.26 > > Later, we found that since that project is no legal entity and cannot be > well-defined, it is not entitled to hold copyright over anything. At the > same time, the university and the foundation had pushed the FarsiWeb > project to become a spin-off company, which we founded in September 2003 > (Behdad is a co-founder). We then transferred of rights to work we had > created to this company, and we started to use the company copyright. We > assumed that we can keep the work copyrighted in both Iran and outside > Iran by using a double copyright line, one for the company and one for > FSF: > > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/po/fa.po?rev=1.39 > > After a while, I found ways to recruit people to do GNOME translation, > including hiring a professional translator, Meelad Zakaria, to work on > GNOME translation. After a period of his working on GNOME, he was > becoming frustrated so we started to hold by-invitation translation > parties in Sharif University campus. It was a great success and has led > to activation of possible contributors (or them understanding that > Persian l10n is not really that easy). During these parties, several > friends and almost all company-employees contributed translations, which > were later reviewed and checked in to the GNOME CVS. It was with these > parties that we finally passed the first 50% frontier. Every person > participating in these translation parties that was not a company > employee has signed a copyright disclaimer in Persian, with a similar > text to the FSF translation disclaimer, but additionally explicitly > letting us transfer the rights to the FSF or any other organization we > feel appropriate. Like the FSF disclaimer, we mentioned that this > applies to translations of "freely redistributable software programs". > > In my reading of the FSF disclaimer, which I have personally signed, it > applies only to translations that we provide to the FSF itself (i.e. > putting an FSF copyright notice on its header), but Behdad has claimed > that we the people who have signed that disclaimer "CANNOT claim > copyright" on any of our translations anymore. I am assuming that he > claims every translation of a free software program I will do in my life > after signing that disclaimer will be copyrighted by the FSF. But I > guess I may not speak for him. An email of his about the matter is here: > > http://lists.sharif.edu/pipermail/farsi/2005-April/000328.html > > But all this has an allegedly dark side. People who contacted us over > the Internet or did not reside in Iran had a harder time contributing to > the Persian translation effort than those working in the same room with > me or those participating in our translation parties. We somehow needed > to establish trust over email, which was not that easy. > > Some people have wanted to impose their own Persian idiolect in their > translations and were offended when their translation were reviewed, > some of them considered that an attack against their personality. Others > left the project during times of inactivity, when some of their emails > were left unanswered or when I was foolishly waiting for a glossary from > the Persian Academy. Even Behdad has not yet passed the process of the > review of his work on gucharmap (more about this later), which was done > at a time that he had moved outside Iran. > > In short, only one contributor outside of FarsiWeb and translation > parties has had his work accepted for the GNOME Persian translation, > Hedayat Vatankhah: > > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gconf-editor/po/fa.po?rev=HEAD > > That is in comparison to about twenty contributors whose work has been > checked in to the GNOME CVS, reviews of which was mostly done through > communications by email or in person or in translation parties. > > Behdad objects to the current system, and claims that I have discouraged > some very good potential contributors by acting in certain ways. He has > also suggested that I am trying to create a copyright monopoly for the > company using these explanations as an excuse, by forcing contributors > to disclaim their rights in Iran or assigning them to the company. > > He has also mentioned that me and the two other most active contributors > to the Persian translation effort have formed a conspiracy. I assume > that he believes it is a conspiracy that is helping me to do these wrong > doings. These two active contributors are Elanz Sarbar (my wife) and > Meelad Zakaria (a friend). Both are colleagues and FarsiWeb employees. > > That was one story line. I appreciate any kind of advice about that. > > 2) The other is about a mailing list. We have not had an official > mailing list for the GNOME Persian localization project. There has been > a *closed* mailing list with open archives that was historically used > for communication between some selected people interested in Persian > localization, mostly concentrating on KDE at its early days. Since the > list resided on my server, and I did not see a need for a separate GNOME > Persian list, it has also been used for some of the communications > related to the GNOME translation into Persian. It has also been used as > an address for the Persian team in the Language-Team headers of the PO > files, but not the GTP Teams page or the page linked from it. The list > currently contains about one-third of the GNOME Persian contributors, > and even includes people who have (to my knowledge) never contributed > Persian translations to free software. > > A while ago, for some reason, I removed an email from Behdad from the > archives of that mailing list, which resided on a machine for which I am > responsible to Sharif University for. While I don't consider that list a > part of the GNOME project, Behdad has mentioned that he supposes that it > is implied from a Language-Team header in GNOME Persian translations > that this is a mailing list of the GNOME Project, and that "The act of > removing messages from the archive for personal reasons is not tolerated > in the GNOME project." > > I am seeking your advice again, specially if there is such a policy > about not removing emails from archives in GNOME, that a translation > team must have a mailing list, or that an email address mentioned at the > Language-Team header would count as a part of the GNOME project. > > 3) The third matter is about internal procedures and policies. In short, > the team's current practice has been to translate verbs that appear on > buttons not to their imperative forms in Persian, but to either > infinitive or passive forms. In my opinion, that is the current practice > in Persian software, and had been devised mostly because the users in > the Iranian culture would assume commands printed in buttons would be > towards them, not by them to the computer. In my opinion, that is also > because Persian is a more "polite" language, more like German than > English, which means that a singular form may look very informal but a > plural form may be confusing sometimes. > > So it has been our existing policy to do that this way, and all the > checked in translations have either used the infinitive form or the > passive form, based on the context. > > Behdad, in his first translation which he wanted to contribute to the > Persian GNOME, tried to change that practice. This was after he thought > he may check in his updates to the Persian translations without any kind > of review to the GNOME CVS, which I then explained to him and reverted. > > The discussion about his suggested change was fruitful to some degree > and was joined by others, but we could not reach any kind of agreement. > I failed to agree with his points, and he insisted on his opinion. The > discussion was discontinued without reaching any kind of conclusion, and > the gucharmap translation which he has provided was not checked in. > > This was before the translation parties and the new much more active > shape of things. During the parties, we did not assign gucharmap to > anybody, and Meelad emailed Behdad a few times with a request to submit > his latest work, so that it could be more informally reviewed so we can > get his work into GNOME. > > During a time that we had Internet connection problems on 2005-11-05, he > emailed me and Meelad personally and said: > > "I finished the gucharmap translation based on all the responses > on the list in early 2005. I believe it should be committed as > is. Any further discussion should go to the list. Since > tarballs are due in a few hours, I will go on and commit before > making a tarball if it's not already committed." > > That did not include the change we had requested for the verb on the > "Find" button, was removing a copyright notice, and may also have other > problems (but I have not checked it in detail yet). But before we had a > chance to review his work (and before we were even able to read his > email), he went and checked that in to the GNOME CVS about 33 hours > later, without my confirmation or any other active reviewer's. > > I don't know if there is a GTP policy against this, but the current > policy of the Persian team (originally imposed by myself), does not > allow such acts. > > Later, when Meelad reviewed Behdad's work, I went and committed that to > the CVS immediately (although it could have benefited from a second > review by me, I did not consider that necessary), and since I thought > that that translation which removed a copyright line was included in the > GNOME 2.12 release (which could have been the only reason Behdad had > committed the file without any review), went and emailed Noah and the > release team to re-release gucharmap with the new translation (that > included the copyright line and a fix to the disputed message, among > other things). But Behdad reverted my commit (which contained several > improvements to his translations), only restoring the removed copyright > line: > > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gucharmap/po/fa.po > > I did not touch that again, in fear of getting this into a > > He has mentioned that "I have been patient enough to > read and follow tens of email communication, all for contributing > translations to gucharmap. In return, I expect that any change > to the translations of that module pass through the same process." > > I have two problems with that: first of all, he has only been patient, > but not accepting some of the comments, and second, I don't assume that > a process that has proved to be frustrating should be repeated for > updating his translation. > > While I understand that he is now a co-maintainer of gucharmap, I don't > consider him having the final say about Persian translation matters in > that package, and I don't consider he has a right to revert > contributions or impose policies. > > That was the third story. And the most important point for which I wish > to ask your advice. What would you recommend? Do you think somebody with > commit rights to the GNOME CVS (or a package co-maintainer for the > matter) has the right to commit his translations to GNOME without (and > against) the approval of the coordinator or the translation team? > > The final notes: > > Behdad had warned me in a personal communication (which I am reproducing > without his explicit permission) that: > > "This is my last warning to you, the very next time I see you > making rules of yourself or anything when it comes to Persian > translation of GNOME, I don't wait a minute. You know what I > mean." > > In our previous private communications, he has mentioned his frustration > over the issues I mentioned above, and I had promised to try to solve > them, and has provided a deadline for me to try to solve them by the > time or he would take the matter to this mailing list. > > But I, after thinking about the matters and seeing that I may not be > able to solve issues that I don't necessarily agree that are issues and > have been probably created because of possible shortcomings of my > actions, I decided to write to this mailing list myself. > > I wish to apologize for the very long email, but this may be the only > way of ending this frustrating debate. I also apologize to Behdad, as a > dear friend and colleague, in case I have frustrated him or I am > continuing to do so. I consider all this to be for the good of the GNOME > Persian translation effort, and I believe Behdad considers the same. > While I deny forming any kind of conspiracy about GNOME translation, I > agree that I had made some mistakes, but I insist that they had been > because I had believed they would result in better Persian translations > in GNOME. > > Looking forward for your constructive comments, > Roozbeh > > > > --behdad http://behdad.org/ _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
