[Freecats-Dev] Joining OmegaT project (answer to Marc)

[Henri Chorand]

Marc Prior wrote:

> I believe that if an open-source project is to succeed, it needs the
> support of a group of people with the right attitude. Quite simply,
> presenting the developer(s) with a shopping list of feature requests
> before even trying the product is not the right attitude.

I agree.

> It may work in the commercial market, and I am sure that Deja Vu's
> success, for example, is due mainly to Emilio Benito's response to
> feature requests from his customers. But Emilio is charging (what -
> 600? 1,000? Euros/Dollars) for Deja Vu.

Around 1000 Euros/Dollars per license.

> You might also say that Yves Champollion was able to develop Wordfast
> to maturity, and give it away. But Yves also recognized that he could
> not continue to do so indefinitely, which is what led him into his
> very sad partnership with a commercial company.

Beware! Yves is subscribed ;-)
As far as I could see, he stopped his partnership and now distributes 
his stuff all by himself.
I'm only beginning to learn WordFast, but I can at least say Yves seems 
very responsive to user requests.

> In the same way, Keith's work is voluntary. I am amazed that he has
> been willing to do so much, but it should be obvious that at some
> stage, he will no longer be able to contribute to the project in the
> same measure. So if the project is to develop further, programmer
> support will be needed.

True. See my other email.

> (...) So, if you want support for Free CATs, you will have to prove
> to people that something is happening. And since things are already
> happening at OmegaT, why not support us? After all, OmegaT and Free
> CATs are not in competition and OmegaT's code is available to the
> Free CATs team, so Free CATs stands to gain from any investment of
> effort it makes in OmegaT.

I was expecting this question :-))

As you express it in a rather straightforward way, the least I can do is 
to be very frank in return.

1) When I started Free CATS, I had not heard about OmegaT at all, and I 
had been very frustrated by the utter lack of cooperation from the 
project team of a so-called free software project, ForeignDesk. Simos 
also knows the full story.

2) To date, OmegaT is the only really interesting free software project 
we noticed.

3) As I'm not a God of Computing - even though I'd really love to ;-))
I will never pretended I could write a better-than-everybody else CAT 
software in the little time I'm able to spare - not in this life. Sigh.

4) Even though they are not finalized, our design efforts helped me to:
- think about the whole idea a bit more seriously (somewhere, it's not lost)
- realize that what I thought I knew about CAT was in fact not that much
- note that very few people do the efforts they could do in order to 
help themselves (and others as well), making true efforts like Keith's 
ones look even more valuable by comparison.

So, in a nutshell:
If Keith and you feel like you want us to join, then I really believe 
the best we can do is to join our forces and work together.

I personally vote: yes.

I also requested each of the project team members to vote.

<Private Joke Mode=On>
There is then only one issue left - the project name.
Should we vote on this major question?
(Recent wars may have started for less serious reasons.)
I invested all my yearly income ($15) in freecats.org domain name and 
took the time to register our project on the FSF's Savannah portal.
</Private Joke Mode=Off>

I must say I also like OmegaT name, so in fact I don't really care.

BUT, whatever the name, I believe a mailing list to which everybody is 
subscribed, a .org domain name and Savannah hosting ARE nice tools - and 
important in order to spread the word efficiently.
So, a portal (preferrably multi-lingual some time later on) is a Good Thing.
Let me know your thoughts.


Henri