On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 1:54 AM, Tomas Bodzar <tomas.bod...@gmail.com>wrote:
> ... > > I wonder if the Lemote would consider extending the company's offer of a > system to those willing to contribute to the Lemote application platform to > OpenBSD >developers.... http://dev.lemote.com... > > A lot of projects happy with GNU/Linux because of some reasons which mostly > don't apply at all. > Yes. Maybe they use it because they're comfortable with it. Maybe they use it because it's perceived as being multi-lingual, or even that it's just not hostile to their language, or whatever. > Given that Lemote wishes to mass-produce computers for the rural people of China, they would also need lots of servers. Any chance of producing a multi-lingual installer >? OpenBSD is not targeted to typical users (but it can be prepared for use for > those users). De facto standard language in system administration is English > so why to have installer in different language? Especially one which is > mostly about hitting enter only. In running system after install you can > have any of the most used languages either for keyaboard only in console or > complete apps in X. > Good point. I don't know if English-speaking "typical" users are equivalent to Chinese "typical" users. Do a study on foreigners earning advanced science and mathematics degrees in the U.S. What I'm getting at when I discuss language in this list isn't to aggravate people who think the world must conform to their strict interpretation of English. They're a lost cause, anyway... http://www.oed.com/public/oed3 "Every three months the entire OED database is republished online, with new words added for the first time and older entries revised according the exacting standards of modern historical lexicography." Ultimately Theo decides what is used in OpenBSD and I get that. I get your point about the install being easy, and I agree, but this goes way beyond that. This is about the big picture. I'm not asking Theo and the developers to *switch* to Chinese, or Afrikaans, or anything of the sort. I'm merely trying to get people to think and consider about the implications of people wanting to use the best software possible for servers and give them an opportunity to work with the OpenBSD foundation. Isn't it important to give people a reason to want to work with you? Including people is very important. If the Chinese were willing to go through so much trouble to arrive at an excellent low-power consumption computing platform, why *wouldn't* they want the very best operating system, especially for servers? I've always wondered if the Chinese thought that learning English was trivially easy. As much as I would like to ask a Chinese that, I realize that it's not a polite thing to ask. That's not the point. What makes you think they need English speakers to translate? Maybe the OpenBSD Foundation has everything to gain by being more receptive to more foreign languages. Is it possible that the OpenBSD Foundation might appeal to more people the world over just by indicating a willingness to cooperate? I wonder if Theo has travelled to China and I wonder if he speaks other languages. > For sure you're free to provide patches for multilingual installer as > long as it will be able to fit one floppy only (want to see that > because of need for UTF ;-)). > > > > > Daniel Villarreal > > > > > > PS: I'm not from English speaking country and my mother language is not > English > Even without touching the installer, you've already have several languages represented at openbsd.org, so why not add more to the web site, just that alone would be a big boost ? Sincerely, Daniel Villarreal
