[FM Discuss] Finnish collaboration

[Tomi Toivio]

Hello,

This actually has little to do with *Finnish* FLOSS Manuals, but... I was
wondering if anyone ever thought about this one.

I have been meeting some Kenyan friends and emailing them. The idea is that
FLOSS Manuals would be hugely useful in Eastern Africa, since people are
mostly using pirated commercial software. There everybody has a pirate copy
of Windows, which has no updates and virus protection, and soon becomes
infested with viruses and very slow and unusable.

There would therefore be a huge demand for FLOSS software and manuals.

It seems like there would not be necessary to translate FLOSS Manuals into
Swahili - English would be fine. The larger problem would be that even
though computers are available the internet connections are often really
slow.

What about burning FLOSS Manuals *and* the software on a CD-ROM and
distribute it in developing countries? Wouldn't this be a nice way to do
some technology transfer? The "No Bandwidth" version of FLOSS Manuals?

Could some development NGO take this CD-ROM and distribute it in Africa?

Regards
Tomi

2009/12/18 Lachlan Musicman <datakid at gmail.com>

> um. you rock. keep up the awesome.
>
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 01:42, Tomi Toivio <tomi at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > We really are getting some collaboration here in Finland.
> >
> > Next Monday we are going to finish the translation of the Inkscape manual
> > and publish it. We will send a press release about Santa Claus giving
> > everybody "free software with a free manual" since the new version of
> > Inkscape was released recently. Our previous press release in September
> was
> > published in at least five different medias.
> >
> > Then we will start flossifying a Scribus manual written by Riku Leino who
> is
> > also in our Inkscape translation sprint and has localized Inkscape into
> > Finnish.
> >
> > We are going to have FLOSS Manuals as a training instrument with Tampere
> > University technical communication and localization department. The
> > localization students will translate a manual and the technical writing
> > students will write a manual as a part of their studies. Does anybody
> here
> > have experience about this? I mean how does our free-wheelin' wiki style
> fit
> > into the classroom setting. There are still a couple of months for
> > planning... But I was pretty much thinking about just having a powerpoint
> > presentation, demonstrating the use of the translation interface on the
> big
> > screen and then we start working in the same style we are using for the
> > Inkscape translation sprint. And see what kind of procedures will emerge.
> >
> > I will also go and talk to Helsinki University computer science students
> > with people from the Linux.fi wiki and see what happens. This is again a
> bit
> > different, since I already gave a short speech about FLOSS Manuals in
> > OpenMind, but this one should be a longer presentation.
> >
> > We are going to start working on a new manual with a group of Finnish
> > developers during the Christmas vacation. They have a new open source web
> > platform that is a little bit similar to Ruby on Rails, I know they don't
> > like that comparison since it isn't very accurate, but it is still the
> > easiest way to describe it quickly. How did the Ruby on Rails manual
> process
> > go?
> >
> > I probably forgot some things but these are the ones that are going to
> > happen during this winter.
> >
> > --
> > Best Regards
> > Tomi Toivio
> > Open Source Coordinator
> > http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
> > tomi at flossmanuals.net
> > +358445488856
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> the historian of science looks in vain for a single line of development.
>
> Norbert Wiener.
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
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>



-- 
Best Regards
Tomi Toivio
Open Source Coordinator
http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
tomi at flossmanuals.net
+358445488856
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