On 07/14/2014 02:34 PM, shankar prasad wrote: Hi Shankar, Thank you for bringing this topic for the discussion. I certainly agree the need of bringing "Virtual Meetups" - not just for review purpose but for also development and any other purpose that may come. I understand that the barriers of organizing physical meetups is a challenge especially when it becomes mandatory step of the finalization of the materials that we standardize and publish it to the world. At the same time, I also do understand the importance of having physical meetups. +1 My vote for "Virtual Meetups" Thanks, -- Regards, Ankit Patel http://www.ankit644.com/

Hi, This is my first post. I totally agree with much of what FUEL does -- hence my presence here. By way of introduction, I've been involved in L10N since 2002, having been the owner of Tamil projects for Mozilla (2002-2004), OOo (2003-2011) and LO (2011-present). I'm not a translator, but do this work largely out of curiosity. Now, the purpose of this note: I saw this question in the e-mail: "Can the FOSS community save 197 endangered Indian languages?" It is an interesting question. But it ultimately misleads, I feel. I don't think FOSS community, or for that matter any IT-oriented communities, including L10N communities, could (or should) be fueled by a desire to strengthen -- let alone save -- languages. I believe software are simply tools to help people; but because they are generally made in English, there exists a barrier that prevents people of minority languages to use them in their daily lives. L10N, at its core, seeks to lower this barrier so that the software become accessible. It follows, therefore, the success of a localised software, is not determined by the quality of the language used in the software per se, but by the adoption and usage of the said software by the target minority community. And, much of that work, for better or worse, has to happen in the field, away from our computers. Experience teaches us that this work doesn't stop at making software speak the target community's language, but extends to creating sufficient documentation, and training materials, and addressing user concerns. The software should somehow help the target people; must solve their issues; must lighten their burden; must entertain; so on and so forth. My point: love of language, and work in a language forms but a small, albeit important, part of making software successful. Sorry for this rather longish, and I suppose, know-all sounding note. Anyway ... cheers, -e. On 20 July 2014 16:46, Rajesh Ranjan <rajesh672(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: