Juergen Katins and the German translation

ruby-talk
1

I’m speaking only for myself, not for Dave
or Andy or the Ruby community.

Herr Katins, you seem frustrated by the negative
reception to your work. You seem inclined to
leave the Ruby community now in disgust.

But I would ask you to stay.

It is true that many negative comments have
been made about this project. These were due
only to the license issue (and you responses
to the objections). You were perceived by many
as a thief, and a rather impolite one at that.

I certainly felt that some of your actions (and
words) were inappropriate at least. But I
definitely have no personal animosity toward you.
I don’t think anyone here wishes to disparage
you personally (or your technical expertise).

In my personal opinion: Restore the OPL, apologize
to Dave, and let us all forget any negatives.

Quite apart from any licensing issues, let me
congratulate you on a significant achievement.
My German is not good enough to appreciate the
quality of the work, but I know that you have
put many hours of hard work into it.

I think that your energy and ability could be
a significant addition to the Ruby community.
So I would ask you to stay and contribute. It is
possible to make great contributions without
any controversy.

Just my opinion.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,
Hal Fulton

2

“Hal E. Fulton” schrieb:

It is true that many negative comments have
been made about this project. These were due
only to the license issue (and you responses
to the objections).

Yes, indeed.
I did not know about this translation before,
so I took the original (PDF) for my first
approach to Ruby.
I had a quick look at it now.
As a native german speaker I want to express
my appreciation of the translation.
While used to read IT stuff in english, it
is much more handy and faster to read in the
native language during daily work.
I recognized this effect just in a few
minutes of comparision between the orignal
and the translation.

Juergen, I highly appreciate your german
foreword too, as it expresses your intention
and motivation of doing this work as a reward
to the open source community, whose results
you enjoy in daily work.

And I agree in the advantages of having an
online version, easy readable and adaptable
regarding to changes in the topic it describes
(the Ruby PL).

You were perceived by many
as a thief, and a rather impolite one at that.

We don’t know if there was any prehistory
between Juergen, Dave and Andy.

But me too feel sad, that this case has not
been handled in a more polite way.

You refer to the open source community.
Regarding that I was very astonished you
did not synchronise your work with the
original authors, what I consider the
naturally way.

In my personal opinion: Restore the OPL, apologize
to Dave, and let us all forget any negatives.

I support that and would be glad if this
would be possible.

My German is not good enough to appreciate the
quality of the work,

My German is.

I think that your energy and ability could be
a significant addition to the Ruby community.

Yes, indeed.
As a native documentation is a very important fact
for the propagation of /software in general|Ruby/
to a wide user community.

So I would ask you to stay and contribute. It is
possible to make great contributions without
any controversy.

It is.

Many greetings

Dirk Detering

3

“Dirk Detering” detering@iskv.de writes:

In my personal opinion: Restore the OPL, apologize to Dave, and
let us all forget any negatives.

I support that and would be glad if this would be possible.

FWIW, I’m personally not looking for an apology.

I have two concerns in this whole sorry mess. Firstly, we’re still the
only printed Ruby book released under an open license. If the
community would like to see others, then publishers will need to feel
secure that the licenses they choose to use actually mean
something. Protecting the license is important for the Ruby community.

Second, Juergen Katins does not have a monopoly in supporting the
open source community. I’ve been using open source since the 80’s, and
with Ruby I’ve finally had the opportunity to give something back.

The foundation of open source is the licensing it uses, and that
licensing is enforced through copyright. If the licensing and
copyright mean nothing, then the entire open source community is
threatened. (Imagine the phone conversation with Richard Stallman
should you take one of his GPLed works, translate it to German, and
change its license into something proprietary).

So, I also feel that protecting the license is important for the
entire open source community.

Having said all that, this entire episode has made me very sad, and
that’s not something I want to associate with Ruby. So as far as I’m
concerned it’s not something I’m going to discuss any more.

Thank you Herr Katins for the effort you put in to the translation,
Thanks to everyone in the community who has voiced their support for
the principles of open source licensing.

Now let’s back to our regularly scheduled programming (in Ruby).

Dave