Without any doubt, this is a great project with several benefits mentioned in discussion. If Apache could help this first Chinese-initiated project into incubation, this will stimulate lot of enthusiasms in talented Chinese developer community and many great Chinese-initiated projects could come to Apache community. With fast IT technology growth in China, it would be wise for Apache to engage Chinese developer community from perspectives of users and contributers. I have also been doing elevator-pitching that we should have ApacheCon held in China sooner rather than later.
Regarding to concerns about project communication in English, I don't think its an obstacle for project at all. Chinese education and in general many Chinese people emphasize a lot in English learning through their school system. For example, all official schools in China have made English part of compulsory courses from 6th grades since 3 decades ago, and many schools in big city starts teaching English from elementary school a decade ago. Several commercial English training institutions in China are even listed on New York Stock exchange. There might be difficulty along the way, but I think that's part of Apache incubation process to help project mature. Having experiences of working with a team participating in various Apache projects and Eclipse project out of Beijing location, I would like to help Bluesky project in terms of project communication and release. If I am qualified as a project mentor, I would volunteer myself to be a mentor for this project as well. Thanks, Bo On Jan 3, 2008 8:02 PM, Endre Stølsvik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bill Stoddard wrote: > > Incubator PMC, > > > > > http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/BlueSky > > This sounds like a really interesting project. I mean that in two ways: > first, the project looks very worthwhile in itself, helping rural > communities a couple of extra steps up the education ladder by way of > high tech. > > Secondly, possibly even more important in the long term, having a > Chinese initiated project at Apache would be a huge "political" win, > setting precedents: Despite the vast amount of (talented) Chinese > people, I feel that there are rather few widespread Chinese-initiated or > -led open source software projects - at least I don't know of many (And > if I'm making a fool of myself right there, then please give me a > clue-by-four right now!). It would be a boon to the universe if this > situation could be remedied as fast as possible. I actually have no > doubt that this will happen sooner or later, but if Apache can make it > happen sooner, possibly by helping just this project along the road to > worldwide open source adoption, that would be a really great side-goal > of this incubation. > > And yes - this would obviously have to happen in English. Acknowledging > that Chinese is a HUGE language in terms of the number of people > speaking it, it is still no world language in terms of the number of > nationalities speaking it. This can present a problem for many Chinese, > given that English education hasn't been, _as far as I understand_, a > top priority in China until somewhat recently. > > Thus, to make this happen, there will probably have to be made some > extra efforts on both sides. But this can, as mentioned, make a > precedent - BlueSky will be an example of Chinese initiated, world wide > developed and adopted, open source software - and I believe that the > potential long term rewards, not only for this project, can be big. > > > Endre, lurker. > > > PS: Due to the scope of the project, localization to the native > languages in the region of deployment, or the use of pictograms and > similar, will of course be of huge importance. This focus is also shared > with projects like Ubuntu and OLPC, as far as I understand - there might > be interest in collaboration. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
