Re: Brazilian domains (was: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] PR translations)

2011/5/9 Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>

> Hello,
Hello.


> I'd like to add a few thoughts of mine to this thread.
>
> I am very sorry to hear what happened and still is happening in Brazil. To
> me, as for the whole Steering Committee, it has always been very important
> to be not on one side. It is sad for me to see that there seem to be two
> groups and lots of changes, and I have worked with trust, respect and joy
> with members of both groups, and I would like to do so in the future as
> well. As Brazil is far away, and I don't know the situation very well, I
> always tried to stay out of the line of fire, which I hope is
> understandable.

I don't know why do you feel so sorry. We are very well. Our projects are
growing fast, our contributors either. What I see, from my point of view, is
a lot of noise for nothing. I don't see "groups" either. I see a whole
community and some people who think they can treat it like a corporation.
Everyone have their opinions, that's not mine.

Situation here is: there is a community working hard in many projects, old
and new ones, and a few people acting "behind the scenes", using their
"influence" and trying to push our community to make things that are
convenient to them. And we are resisting. That's simple like that.


> Sorry if this now sounds rather harsh, but my take is:
>
> Domain names with LibreOffice or The Document Foundation should be under
> control of The Document Foundation, and the official mailing lists for each
> project have to be the ones we offer.

I'm not sure what that really means... But by Brazilian laws, a foreign
organization can register a .br domain by naming a legal atourney in Brazil,
and must be compromized in stablishing a local office in Brazilian territory
within one year. Who is TDF atourney? Will TDF open a legalized office here
in Brazil? If not, TDF cannot own a .br domain. In fact, this matter is not
of the community's business, once the domain belongs to the NGO
BrOffice.org. By the way, closing an organization can be a very slow thing
in Brazil.


> Let me explain why: It is not about controlling things or not allowing
> others to be active. In contrast, we would like to have people active on
> their own, without asking us for permission. Our approach is open,
> meritocratic and transparent. However, we all have learned from the past
> that it can happen too quick that projects and groups go their own way, and
> confusion is created on who is talking on behalf of whom. Diversity can be a
> gift, but it can also be a high risk if we are too diverse.

Three things here:
1 - But, still, you are trying to push us into a quick decision. I think
it's a kind of "control", don't you?
2 - I really still don't understand in details what you mean "meritocratic",
yet. What our community have to do to have its merit? What I can see, in
fact, is some Brazilian people were eledged as TDF members, but none of them
are acting in a main project these days, nor involved in core activities.
But I won't give names. You've decided to accept those people, so you should
to know them. Many good people were not accepted, yet. For me it's a
"meritocratic" mistery...
3 - I disagree with your opinion about diversity, but that's not the point
and I have already told that before. Did  you read my earlier replies?


> Hosting a website under the LibreOffice or TDF domain name with own content
> soon will create the idea that this content is official. Even more, it will
> spread knowledge and tools, which in the end can have bad consequences for
> us.

What exactly is an "official" content? What is the criteria to classify
contents as "official"? Are you saing that our contributions to
documentation, extensions and marketing in Brazil and Brazilian websites in
TDF struture are not "official"? What must we do in order to make our
contributions "officials"? And all that stuff done in the past ten years in
the old BrOffice web site? That's not "official" either? Why was it official
before TDF and today it's not?

Sorry, but I am confused about that.


> Don't get the impression that we do want to dictate what you have to use. I
> know that the situation and requirements are different from country to
> country, and that some users are more comfortable with this tool, others
> with other tools. We try hard to provide something everyone can benefit
> from, and I invite you to raise concerns, questions and wishes to our public
> mailing lists.

It has nothing to do with tools. We are already using TDF mailing lists. But
we have a legacy we want to maintain "officially". Will you help us to save
it or will continue closing your eyes to our claims?


> We are all TDF, so there is no one dictating things. Sure, sometimes
> there's one in charge who has to "wear a hat" and have the final say, and
> there is also the Steering Committee if in doubt, but that's no different to
> any well-developed open source community.

Sorry, but it seems you are walking around on this issue. That's not the
point. You are talking to us that we cannot use a libreoffice domain but you
don't answer the question why north american community can do that. There
are something really weird here. And yes, I am feeling dictated by you at
this point. Fortunately, I have nothing to loose with that, personaly. I'm
just trying to understand things and explain what I'm seeing to the
Brazilian Community.


> For the current situation, to me it is rather clear:

I really don't understand how can you see it clear, when you said above "As
Brazil is far away, and I don't know the situation very well..."


> Please connect the TDF and LibO domain names in Brazil to our nameservers,
> so we can point them to our infrastructure. If there are legal concerns of
> being the domain holder, but having services connected to our servers,
> please let me know -- there is a legally working way to transfer the domain
> names to the German association and later on to the Foundation when it
> exists. I've already discussed that with our provider, who provides a
> trustee service in Brazil if needed.

I have explained that point above.


> What I neither can understand nor accept is that a website is built in
> parallel, e-mail addresses are being handed out, and separate mailing lists
> are created. I guess I repeat myself by saying that I want all of us to work
> on one thing, united, speaking with one voice. Too much diversity and
> "parallel universes" do not help, they do harm. They harm a lot.

In fact, I'm getting tired of all this. I'm not a parrot to keep repeating
things again and again. And I'm not pass all my day upset with all those
things. I don't need that. How many times shall I say "we are not creating
anything, we just have a legacy, we want to maintain".


> Of course I respect the work that the Brazilian community has done the past
> years, but it can be no argument that you now need the LibreOffice domain
> name for connecting your servers, otherwise data from five years would be
> lost. How long has the LibreOffice name been existing? Roughly seven months,
> so this is no argument. I am happy to provide you a DNS alias so you have a
> domain name to connect your machine to, in case you don't have any other
> domain name available -- but the main website really needs to point to the
> TDF infrastructure.

I have already explained that in another reply, please read it.
And about your "Roughly seven months, so this is no argument", I just can't
aswer that in details in a polish manner. We have passed five of those seven
months, trying to stay in trail and out of the power dispute in NGO. Please,
don't make such statements when you have said you don't know the whole
story.


> pt-br.libreoffice.org is our Brazilian website, and contributors are
> welcome. I am also more than happy to provide a link to previous content
> from there if this is suitable. But, please, do not build up your parallel
> universe with own sites, tools, addresses and mailing lists.
How many times I must say we ARE NOT builting a parallel website? It was
already there when I came to this community and a lot of its contents have
already been migrated to TDF structure.

I'm not sure if I am being understood here, since I am pushed to give the
same answers again and again. Did you read my other replies?


> Especially in these times, working united, collaborating as a team,
> exchanging thoughts as friends, is more important than ever.
>
> I beg your trust, and ask you to cooperate with us in this matter. We are
> flexible in tools and sites, and we can improve things when improvements are
> needed, but TDF has been created to have all assets in one hand,
> independent, safe, stable and secure.

Florian, that was already replied in another mail. Please, read them.

Trust and Cooperation? That's not to me you have to ask it. I am here only
replying to your statements, telling the whole story and passing it all to
the Brazilian Community. I don't make the decisions, the Community does,
discussing and voting in our mailing lists (again, all of them are legacy
from the old  BrOffice.org structure). I garantee to you I am not filtering
nor "painting the frame with my own colors" to them, but you can talk
directly to the community if you wish. And maybe you could see the
difficulties of some things, but I have a lot of doubts about it.

So, I can ask you the same thing: trust us and cooperate with us. A good
begining is trying not to make such acusations of "parallel stuff" and
things like that.


> Joining us in this mission is, I hope, also to upmost interest for you.

I really can't understand why you guys keep saying we are walking to a
diferent way. Many and many times, for the last four or five months, we
always stated that we were jumping in, and migrating all of our contents to
TDF structure and so on. Suddenly, this thing became a matter of extreme
urgency. We have a lot of content in TDF wiki,
pt-br.libreoffice.orgwebsite, ODFAuthors and other websites. We are
really making our best
efforts to migrate our contents to TDF structure and you are acusing us to
built parallel stuff. There's something strangely weird up here.


> Florian
Have a good night, if you are in Germany right now.
And my best regards.

-- 
<http://pt-br.libreoffice.org>
Paulo de Souza Lima
Técnico em Eletrônica e Administrador
http://www.pasl.net.br
http://almalivre.wordpress.com
Curitiba - PR
Linux User #432358
Ubuntu User #28729

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