Free Software Magazine

[Hong Feng]

   I was wondering about the fact that it would perhaps need to be
   translated, before being printed ?

   Did you think about it, or you thought it wouldn't need to ?

I have thought about these ideas. Actually, I am expecting the magazine
could be translated into various languages by the local free software
community all over the world.

One tricky issue is: not every article in the magazine will be 
GNU FDLed, some of them would be "verbatim" license, means modifications
are not allowed with the prior permission of the author (RMS said
this is a reasonable rule for the authors who dont want their
opinions will be changed by others), translation is regarded as 
a sort of "modification".

So, if a local free software community wants to translate the magazine
into their locale, I hope they could contact with me at first, to 
discuss the copyright issues, and other details on technical support.

   In France, a lot of people have difficulties to read English speaking
   publications, so they avoid them as often as they can.

this is usual case, some programmers here in China are good at
hacking, but their english are poor, so definitely we will have
Chinese version of the magazine. There are already several local
publishers want us to support them (though the virgin issue is
not born yet)!

   Except this potentially huge question, I'd be very interested by this
   project, at least for participating to the French publication.

Good news that you could support it.  At present, France is a "strong" country
for free software movement, I suggest you need to have 2-3 more people
to join. One will be in charge of translation (organizing other
hackers to do it) and editing, one for typesetting, and one for
printing and distribution. Distribution is very time-consuming, as you
have to print the addresses of many recipients, paste the labels
onto envelopes, send them to post office, etc.

   I'm the French translator of Georg's Brave GNU World, and the
   responsible for Alcove's newletter, so I suppose I've already proven to
   be in favor of any publication about Free Software... 

   Could the Brave GNU World be a part of this publication ?

I have not see any drawbacks to do so, but we would better to discuss
with FSF or FSF-Europe on this idea.

Best,
Frederic

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Hong Feng
Publisher, Free Software Magazine
President & CEO, RON's Datacom Co., Ltd.
fred at mail.rons.net.cn   hongfeng at gnu.org
http://www.rons.net.cn/hongfeng.html
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