[Freecats-Dev] Important decision - Free CATS team joins OmegaT project

[Henri Chorand]

Hi all,



Last week, I requested all project team members to vote for or against 
joining OmegaT project team, made up of Keith Godfrey & Marc Prior.

The result is a 100% approval. Even in democracies, it can happen.

I must say it's partly Keith's fault, in that if he had better 
referenced his project, we would have found about it somewhat earlier 
and probably avoided setting up our own project in the first place ;-)

I suggested this move to our little group based on the following 
considerations:
- Even if we would have been happy to launch a new project, have it 
(somewhat magically) instantly developped and become famous with it (we 
knew a GPL project provides no direct source of easy money), we know our 
aim should be fulfilled more efficiently by joining an existing project 
team that begun work on the same lines (or sufficiently similar ones).


Now, I hope everybody will find a place in the project team where he/she 
can best contribute according to his/her skills and available time.


1) Skills
---------
Of course, Keith remains his own project's software architect. As 
everybody knows, and as far as software projects are concerned, Free 
CATS team members are mainly skilled in:
- communication
- technical writing
- testing
- specifications (at least to some extent)
- & of course, localization & translation.

I would like to ask all the people subscribed to our mailing list to 
post in order to let us know about each's skills. Hopefully, a few 
hidden developers will show up.

And... Keith & Marc, feel free to forward us any help requests you might 
have.


2) Project team tools
---------------------
I would also like to read Keith & Marc about the following, concerning 
project-related tools:

Keith & Marc have not yet set up a project portal & a mailing list. I 
believe any project team needs these tools. So my last decision as Free 
CATS project coordinator is to subscribe Keith to Free CATS' mailing 
list, which now counts 25 members, including him. I hope he'll forgive 
me for this authoritarian gesture ;-)

Keith, let us know if and how you want to use Free CATS' mailing list 
and portal on Savannah.

Savannah portal features are rather restricted in that they do not allow 
database-based portals, but I was very happy to see them accept our Free 
CATS project, so I'd like to keep it. Anybody wishing to help setting up 
a more mature portal, Wiki- or Zope-based for instance, is welcome. In 
fact, Simos has used the free space available on Source Forge for 
another project that I have put on hold in order to put a Wiki on it. We 
can't really rely on it if we want to strictly follow the applicable 
rules (there also are copyright issues).
We could also set up a second portal on Source Forge, but in the same 
time, these copyright issues remain with Source Forge, so ideally, I'd 
prefer another solution.

A last detail is my huge investment with a freecats.org domain name, but 
I guess Keith will (rigthly) keep OmegaT project name.

BTW, http://www.omegat.com domain name has been taken by a German 
CAD/CAM company, but omegat.org (& omegat.net) remain available. It 
might be a good idea to lock one of those.


Cheers,

Henri