2003-11-17 - Summary of mozilla.org staff meeting
Gervase Markham
-------------------------------------------------
Present: leaf, myk, brendan, mitchell, bart, asa, dbaron, blizzard,
ben, scott, scc, gerv.
*Releases update*
- We freeze on Tuesday night for 1.6 beta.
- Asa will be posting regular release updates to n.p.m.seamonkey
starting this week.
- Drivers will be tweaking the lengths of the freezes to reflect
something closer to the experience of the last few milestones.
- 1.6 beta may be accompanied by Thunderbird 0.4
*Localised builds*
- Original idea was a second 1.5 CD with language packs
- Now want to get localised versions for 1.6 final
- blizzard is working on an auto-localisation tool
- Need to figure out which languages we care about
- Need to determine whether we will ship available language packs on the
original release CD or on an update a few days/weeks later.
- Do we ship full builds or just language packs? Leaning towards packs
rather than builds.
*New website*
- Technical maintenance and development requires some time
- dbaron might spend three hours on the CSS
- myk could work on back-end scripting and automation
*Thunderbird tinderboxes*
- leaf says next week
*CVS over SSH*
- Worth looking into again, after the Linux incident
- Sourceforge do it; talk to someone there
- roc would know how hard it is to use once it's set up
- scc will try and sort this out
Gerv
Simon Paquet
>*Localised builds*
>
>- Original idea was a second 1.5 CD with language packs
>- Now want to get localised versions for 1.6 final
>- blizzard is working on an auto-localisation tool
>
>- Need to figure out which languages we care about
According to the october-logs from
<http://www.net.oregonstate.edu/ftp/usage/mozilla/http/usage_200310.html>,
people speaking the following languages access the mozilla.org ftp-server
most:
Hits KBytes Language
===========================================================================
1 68.93% 71.53% English or unclear (.com, .net, .org, .edu, .mil,
Australia, New Zealand, Canada[1] and unresolved)
2 6.36% 7.29% German (Germany, Switzerland [2] and Austria)
3 3.85% 2.72% Japanese
4 3.00% 2.99% French (France and Belgium [3])
5 2.38% 2.01% Italian
6 2.06% 2.24% Dutch (Nederlands and Belgium [3])
7 1.95% 0.84% Russian
8 1.30% 1.12% Polish
9 1.06% 0.84% Spanish (Spain and Mexico)
10 0.95% 0.84% Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal)
11 0.80% 1.01% Finnish
12 0.76% 0.63% Czech
13 0.75% 0.92% Swedish
14 0.53% 0.64% Danish
15 0.44% 0.21% Hebrew
16 0.32% 0.33% Hungarian
17 0.31% 0.14% Ukrainian
[1] People in the Canadian province Quebec have French as their main
language.
[2] There are four main languages in Switzerland: Most people speak
German, people in the region around Geneva speak French and small
minorities speak Italian or Raeto-Romanic (a language similar to
Latin)
[3] Approx. one third of the Belgian population has French as their main
language, the other two thirds speak Dutch.
While this statistic is flawless at best (it totally ignores the hits and
download numbers of the various language-project websites, the language
derives just from the IP-adresses accessing the ftp-server), I think it
gives a good indication which languages should be included on the CD.
Besides the obvious TOP 5 candidates (German, Japanese, French, Italian
and Dutch), Spanish should be included IMO because it is the main
language in Middle America and South America and the US have a large
Spanish-speaking minority.
>- Do we ship full builds or just language packs? Leaning towards packs
> rather than builds.
It's a matter of available space obviously, but I would vote for full
builds, because it is much more end-user-friendly.
Ciao
Simon
--
In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car
parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in
the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please
don't steal this." (Washington Post)
pascal chevrel
> [1] People in the Canadian province Quebec have French as their main
> language.
> [2] There are four main languages in Switzerland: Most people speak
> German, people in the region around Geneva speak French and small
> minorities speak Italian or Raeto-Romanic (a language similar to
> Latin)
French-speakers account for 20% of the population, Italian speakers for 7%
> [3] Approx. one third of the Belgian population has French as their main
> language, the other two thirds speak Dutch.
32% speak French, 58% speak Dutch, 10% speak German
>
> While this statistic is flawless at best (it totally ignores the hits and
> download numbers of the various language-project websites, the language
> derives just from the IP-adresses accessing the ftp-server), I think it
> gives a good indication which languages should be included on the CD.
I don't think so, I think it is flawed :
- If I don't speak English and Mozilla is already available in my
language, why would I download anything from the states ?
- If my language isn't listed it is most probably because Mozilla failed
to promote itself in my area, not because I am not interested. Do you
really find logical to include Dutch and not Chinese who account for a
quarter of the global population ? Chinese, arabic, Russian and
Portuguese should be listed as they represent a large part of the
glosbal population
>
> Besides the obvious TOP 5 candidates (German, Japanese, French, Italian
> and Dutch), Spanish should be included IMO because it is the main
> language in Middle America and South America and the US have a large
> Spanish-speaking minority.
>
>
>>- Do we ship full builds or just language packs? Leaning towards packs
>> rather than builds.
>
>
> It's a matter of available space obviously, but I would vote for full
> builds, because it is much more end-user-friendly.
I agree on this one.
Pascal
Locus
> Le 24/11/2003 02:50, :
>
> > [1] People in the Canadian province Quebec have French as their main
> > language.
> > [2] There are four main languages in Switzerland: Most people speak
> > German, people in the region around Geneva speak French and small
> > minorities speak Italian or Raeto-Romanic (a language similar to
> > Latin)
>
> French-speakers account for 20% of the population, Italian speakers for 7%
>
> > [3] Approx. one third of the Belgian population has French as their main
> > language, the other two thirds speak Dutch.
>
> 32% speak French, 58% speak Dutch, 10% speak German
More like 64% Dutch, 35% French and 1% German.
>
> >
> > While this statistic is flawless at best (it totally ignores the hits and
> > download numbers of the various language-project websites, the language
> > derives just from the IP-adresses accessing the ftp-server), I think it
> > gives a good indication which languages should be included on the CD.
>
> I don't think so, I think it is flawed :
>
> - If I don't speak English and Mozilla is already available in my
> language, why would I download anything from the states ?
>
> - If my language isn't listed it is most probably because Mozilla failed
> to promote itself in my area, not because I am not interested. Do you
> really find logical to include Dutch and not Chinese who account for a
> quarter of the global population ? Chinese, arabic, Russian and
> Portuguese should be listed as they represent a large part of the
> glosbal population
>
>
>
> >
> > Besides the obvious TOP 5 candidates (German, Japanese, French, Italian
> > and Dutch), Spanish should be included IMO because it is the main
> > language in Middle America and South America and the US have a large
> > Spanish-speaking minority.
Dutch would also give many South-Africans access, Afrikaans being a
sister language of Dutch it's understood by most Afrikaners, and vice
versa.
Simon Paquet
>> While this statistic is flawless at best (it totally ignores the hits and
>> download numbers of the various language-project websites, the language
>> derives just from the IP-adresses accessing the ftp-server), I think it
>> gives a good indication which languages should be included on the CD.
>
>I don't think so, I think it is flawed :
Sorry, I meant flawed, not flawless.
>- If I don't speak English and Mozilla is already available in my
>language, why would I download anything from the states ?
>
>- If my language isn't listed it is most probably because Mozilla failed
>to promote itself in my area, not because I am not interested. Do you
>really find logical to include Dutch and not Chinese who account for a
>quarter of the global population ? Chinese, arabic, Russian and
>Portuguese should be listed as they represent a large part of the
>global population
I base my conclusions on this one statistic only. Drivers/staff should of
course take a much broader approach. For example, they should mail the
current translation maintainers and ask them for download numbers on
their localization project website.
Brodie Thiesfield
>
> - Need to figure out which languages we care about
Please Please kick the butts of the Mozilla Gumi and get a Japanese
localization included with the distribution. It's embarrassing trying
to get my workmates to adopt Mozilla and finding that there is no
official Mozilla badged Japanese version.
Regards,
Brodie