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<h2><font color="#cc6600" face="Courier New, Courier, mono" size="+2">Community 
  Articles: Opinions, Interviews, Analyses</font></h2>
<p><a href="//lspintro.html" target="_blank">-Louis Su&aacute;rez-Potts</a></p>
<p>25 March 2001</p>
<p><b>The International, II</b></p>
<P>Last <a href="ec15Mar.html" target="_blank">week</a>, 
  I summarized the issues at hand in the debate over what has come to be called 
  the "internationalization" of OpenOffice.org. In a nutshell, the <a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02156.html">advantage</a> 
  of "internationalizing" the site is that we might be able to bring in more developers. 
  The appeal, that is, is practical, not nationalistic. Opponents to this view 
  point out that success might be a form of failure, and rather than bringing 
  people <I>into</I> the project who would contribute to developing the software, 
  we might only end up "<a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02185.html">balkanizing</a>" 
  the project and ultimately stymie development. </P>
<P>The debate has been intense and productive. Numerous community members, from 
  several countries and langugaes, have participated, chief among them Bill Roth, 
  Guy Capra, Dietrich Schulten, &Eacute;ric Savary, Michael S. Zick, and Adam 
  "Goolie" Gould, who clarified the issues and <a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02316.html" target="_blank">coined 
  the term for this debate</a>. Each has proposed, often in great detai (see especially 
  Mike Zick's <a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02481.html" target="_blank">comments</a>), 
  solutions to the problem of not only bringing in linguistically diverse people, 
  but how to arrange communication among the various groups whether English, German, 
  French or Korean, once they have joined the community. (You can read their interventions 
  in the <a href="//www-discuss/current/" target="_blank">discuss 
  list archives</a>.)</P>
<P>For the fact of the matter is that OpenOffice.org is becoming more truly international. 
  Or, perhaps I should write, we are commencing an experiment in which the international 
  constituents of OpenOffice.org will be more fully recognized. For, as I <a href="ec15Mar.html">observed 
  last week</a>, we already <I>are</I> extremely international, at least in the 
  distribution of the community. But that internationalism seems to be merely 
  an accident of geography, a sign of corporate reach, and an indication of the 
  extent to which English, for good or ill, predominates in both technical and 
  commercial communication. </P>
<P>That doesn't mean, however, that it is necessarily the preferred language of 
  everyone, especially for more general discussions. It may very well be the case 
  that quite a few nonnative English-language speakers feel disinclined to contribute 
  their views simply because they must wrestle with a language that, for all its 
  utility in permitting the flow of technical knowledge, is a beast to wrestle 
  with when it comes to expressing less technical things. As a consequence, we 
  may be unintentionally limiting the OpenOffice.org developer community to only 
  those developers able and willing to communicate in English.</P>
<P>In doing so, we are not alone. Yes, there are significant exceptions (and they 
  should provide the rule). Of these, Linux naturally stands out. The paradigmatic 
  Open Source endeavor is by and large quite international in its projects, implementations, 
  and user base. But Linux, unlike OpenOffice.org, is not corporate sponsored; 
  we can't, as a result, easily use it as a model for the evolution of a corporate-sponsored 
  Open Source project. Recently <a href="http://sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">SourceForge</a> 
  has announced a greater emphasis on providing site navigation aids to non-Anglophone 
  visitors. But SourceForge is a hosting company (similar to <a href="http://www.collab.net" target="_blank">CollabNe</a>t), 
  not a software project (such as OpenOffice.org or <a href="http://www.linux.org" target="_blank">Linux</a>). 
  It makes sense that they would provide services to as disparate community as 
  possible. </P>
<P>But, in the case of software projects, where coordination of effort is deemed 
  important, outside of Linux there are precious few projects that do what we 
  are seeking to accomplish (there may be more; I couldn't find any; but my research 
  was spotty). Thus, for instance, the project to which we are often compared, 
  <a href="http://www.mozilla.org" target="_blank">Mozilla.org</a>, is resolutely 
  Anglophonic. Yes, its <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/community.html" target="_blank">I18N 
  newsgroup</a>, which pertains to international issues (the "18" refers to the 
  eighteen letters in-between the "I" and the "N"), contains non-English messages, 
  some of which were wholly beyond my browser's capabilities to represent. But 
  nowhere on the Mozilla.org site did I find anything in any language other than 
  English. This doesn't mean that it doesn't exist; I just couldn&#146;t find 
  it, and it certainly suggests a strong Anglophone bias, regardless of their 
  rather chaotically polyglot and spam-friendly (and seemingly entirely unmoderated) 
  I18N newsgroup.</P>
<P>So our experiment is unique, at least for a corporate-sponsored Open Source 
  project. It marks a milestone: We have achieved the point where there are enough 
  people interested in the project to create a space for their activities. We 
  are going to create a section of the site for a French component and an associated 
  list, also in French. The full details are still being worked out (and the devil 
  is in the details!), but the site will go live soon. This component will not 
  be a full duplicate of the site; rather, it will contain elements of <a href="http://www.openoffice.online.fr/" target="_blank">Guy 
  Capra's French version of OpenOffice.org</a>, and it will serve to encourage 
  Francophone participation in the community. </P>
<P>To emphasize, this is an experiment; a first and careful step; but if it is 
  successful, other languages will be included, and the most obvious of those 
  is German. (French has only gotten the step up--if that is the right term--because 
  Guy's site already exists, can be easily incorporated into the existing OpenOffice.org 
  site, and because Guy pressed his case hard.) Success, in this instance, will 
  be determined almost by a lack of failure (a lack, that is, of balkanization) 
  and by the entry into the site of more users, regardless of whether they are 
  Francophone or not. For the creation of the French components, as well as the 
  response by Sun to the proposal, is surely a welcome sign that OpenOffice.org 
  is a community effort. </P>
<P>But that effort will only remain a "community" effort--and not a chaotic mess--if 
  the community stays focused. On a functional level, the places where important 
  decisions--what &Eacute;ric Savary called "<a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02405.html" target="_blank">the 
  core work"</a>--are effected will continue to operate under one language, English. 
  And on a more abstract level, community members need to have a coherent sense 
  of the goals of the project (and projects) they are working on. That is, a notion 
  of what OpenOffice.org is about, what it is doing, and where it is going. To 
  this latter end, I have proposed a<a href="//www-discuss/current/msg02467.html" target="_blank"> 
  new mission statement</a> and have asked for commentary, but that is but a start. 
  We also need an agreed-upon, up-to-date roadmap.</P>
<P>As always, please don't hesitate to send your comments to the <a href="//mail_list.html">discuss 
  list</a> or, if you really want, to me, <a href="mailto:louis@openoffice.org">Louis</a>.</P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<h4>Previous articles </h4>
<p>15 March 2001 <i><a href="ec15Mar.html">The International</a></i></p>
<p>9 March 2001 <i><a href="ec9Mar.html">Creating the 
  New Open Source</a></i></p>
<p>1 March 2001 <i><a href="ec1Mar.html" target="_blank">Interview: 
  Sander Vesik</a></i></p>
<p>22 February 2001 <i><a href="MSFTArticle.html">Allchin's 
  Demagoguery, by Bill Roth, guest contributor</a></i></p>
<p>15 February 2001 <a href="ec15Feb.html"><i>Interview 
  with Wilfredo S&aacute;nchez</i></a></p>
<p>9 February 2001 <a href="ec8Feb.html" target="_blank"><i>Organizing 
  Open Source</i></a></p>
<p>1 February 2001 <i><a href="ec1Feb.html" target="_blank">Open 
  Source and Its Culture</a></i></p>
<p>23 January 2001 <i><a href="communityaction.html" target="_blank">Community 
  Action</a></i></p>
<p>16 January 2001 <i><a href="ec16Jan01.html" target="_blank">Quo 
  Vadis OpenOffice.org?</a></i></p>
<p>9 January 2001 <i><a href="thebuild.html" target="_blank">The 
  613 build:&nbsp; problems and opportunities</a></i></p>
<p>3 January 2001 <i><a href="SunsOpenDoor.html" target="_blank">Sun's 
  open door</a></i></p>
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