So over the last two weeks I have been surveying the Internet for Arabic technical sites. Things like news sources, development websites, translation websites, even forums, blogs, etc.

One thing I noticed being shared by most of these resources is mediocrity. It’s hard to find some team that is truly exceptional, apart from the good work eglug has shown in organising successful Linux installfests, and Arabeyes’s ITL library and some other bits, there is not much to be really proud of.

However, it seems that every person or small team are happy in their own little world trying to be it when it comes to IT. There is hardly any cooperation. The ego is strong, there is little leadership, most count on only what they do and dismiss the rest. In short, there is much competition on doing nothing or very little. There are 5 or 6 half dead half alive Arabic distributions, with pretty much one or two at most developers, how you can sustain a distribution on your own for a long time, I am not sure. Nobody does/did it. And Nobody wants to cooperate with the next guy. Heck, I have seen people trying to invent an OS from the ground up!

After a while, some eventually sadly get burnt and give it up all together, and I don’t fault them. The work is difficult, there is very little incentive to produce more. People work in parallel and nobody knows what exists. Take as an example, the recent excellent initiative to produce OOo documentation: there are still half a dozen other teams out there trying to reinvent the same wheel. Once done, of course, as they did not build up on previous work, nobody notices their work and they will give up because it seems like nobody is using it.

There is one thing for sure though, we all at some point share the same motivation: Improving Arabic Support for OSS and developing Arabic tools etc. Let me tell you however that the path is difficult, it requires patience, a lot less ego stroking and more cooperation. I am sure you all know the story of the old man who wanted to teach his children about the importance of unity using wood sticks…

* ego: the exaggerated sense of self importance.

The Gnome Arabic Team is making serious progress to complete Gnome 2.16 translation. We are a bit late due to lack of contributors, but many joined the team recently, so better late than never.

Arabic is a beautiful language, I’m sure you will agree by looking at these screenshots of translated applications. Thanks to all those who helped: Khaled Hosny, Youcef Raffah, Youssef Chahibi, Mohamed Magdy, and all those who translated previous version: Arafat Medini, Bayazidi, and a lot more. I would like to take this chance to extend my invitation to all past contributors and new members: You are always welcome, there is a lot you can do to help the effort: a lot of people are waiting for the release. If you would like to help, please have a look at this roadmap, then email me at djihed at djihed.com

Now, here are the screenshots, click to enlarge:

Gedit: Now becomes the best Arabic Linux Text editor:

Epiphany: The gorgeous Gnome Internet Browser:

Ekiga: the Internet telephony software:

Eye of Gnome: The image viewer:

And last but not least, file-roller, the archive manager: