Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi

Elektroschock writes "KDE, the leading *nix desktop environment, is translated to Farsi (=Persian). Now native language KDE can be used in Iran as well. Farsi is written from left to right. Full story at Dot KDE. Arash Zeini (KDE Farsi) wrote an intresting article about FLOSS in Iran. His view: "It is not a secret anymore that FLOSS is gaining momentum all over the world. We witness an international move and acceptance of FLOSS in the private as well as in the public sector."" Update: 12/29 16:37 GMT by T : That should read "Farsi is written from right to left." (Thanks to Thomas Zander for pointing that out.)

KDE propaganda

[glassesmonkey]

Now that the war in Iraq and Afganistan have died down... I see the KDE/Gnome wars are finally getting the front page /. attention they so deserve. Am I the only one who read the summary and thought the description "the leading desktop environment" seemed to be included just to stir up trouble?

Disclaimer: I prefer KDE but really like Gnome config menus

Re:A little oversensitive, perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, it did not seem that the term "the leading desktop environment" was used in an exclutinary manner - rather, it seemed that the intention was to explain what KDE is (to the occasional Windows-only user that happens upon /.)

From past experience, if it was Gnome described that way then I suspect that the whole discussion would be dominated by irrate KDE fans, screaming about the injustice of the world. For a recent example, see the discussions about UserLinux choosing Gnome as its desktop.

As it is, this seems to be restricted to one rather mild thread so far.

So for the future, everyone note that KDE users are easier to rile than Gnome users and much much more fun ;)

No copyrights?

[Emil Brink]

Well, according to the article, Iran is not a signer of the international copyright law. This means, as far as I understand (I'm no lawyer), that "copyright" as we understand it has no legal standing there.

I associate "free" and "open source" software with software made available under various licenses, i.e. pieces of legalese that use the power of copyright to control what can and cannot be done with the software. Now, if Iran's laws don't recognize even basic copyright for whatever reason, then surely these licenses are meaningless there, and everything can be legally copied in the eyes of local law?

From this perspective, I would be a bit catious as a free software (GPL licensed) author to actively support Irani users. I mean, if they give themselves the right to circumvent my license, and thus "steal" my software, why should I help them by making the software more attractive? Now, of course there is no monetary loss to me from limitless copying of software that is free to redistribute to begin with, but the different legal "flavor" of it all disturbs me somehow. Maybe it's just me being cheap, again. I think I need to meditate a bit over this.

Re:Farsi is Right to Left

[jez9999]

Our numbers are written backwards? The mantissa is *right-justified*, but I see nothing backwards about the way we write numbers.

Re:Farsi is Right to Left

[jeremyp]

Surely numbers as we write them now (in the West) are big endian i.e. the biggest power of 10 comes first.

Re:No copyrights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because there is no copyright law in iran does not mean they will not contribute changes back to you. In some countries, moral law is more adhered to than copyright law. Most people contribute because they want to. not because they are forced to by law. Get a clue.

If the whole world did not have copyright law like in iran(assuming you are right), the gpl would not be required because all knowledge would be available to everyone for free.

The GPL exists because of the selfish and monopolistic evils of corporate companies.

Take a walk around the world before judging the culture of the people you are commenting about, or you will always spell flavour as flavor.

Please say "Persian" not "Farsi"

[Johnny Pissoff]

Excuse me for being a pedant here. But the only reason the word "Farsi" has become current in English is because back in 50's, 60's, 70's neither the f_____g State Department nor the CIA knew that we had a perfectly good and venerable word in English for the language, i.e. "Persian." Listen, to anyone who knows the language (own horn tooting here) it sounds silly. It's completely mispronounced as it's employed in English, the accented syllable for one is just wrong. We don't say, "Do you speak francais?" (imagine it said with American accent, butcher the vowels, heavily glide the last syllable, clearly pronounce the "n"), and the same with any other language. Why? Because we already have perfectly good words for these languages in English. Calling it "Farsi" only highlights Western ignorance and it's exoticisation of the Eastern/Muslim/Oriental other. So why use it? Az kasi ke nedane va nedane ke nedane.... or words to that effect (if memory serves)

Re:Heading trolls off at the pass.

[pirhana]

>> Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?

No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things. What happened later was they deviated from Islamic values and principles including(but not limited to) education and information. Now what they are following is not at all Islamic. I would say most of the Islamic countries are actually feudalistic societies. Also, the western societies didnt advance when they kept information "hidden". On the contray , they advanced when information and knowledge was essentially FREE. Now they are adopting a "hidden" approach in technology and education. Lets see where it takes them in the coming periods. IMHO, this will have a negative impact on their lead in the coming periods.

Re:No copyrights?

[openmtl]

Why do they have to sign some International Copyright Agreement ?

Its domestic law that counts as it sets the obligations of the people in that country. As far as I can see (IANAL) they have fairly standard copyright laws except that the time period is shorter than e.g. US or EU copyright law.

Unesco copyright summary for Iran [unesco.org]

Obviously certain corporates would have an issue with the lack of extended copyright as the US has but the intent of copyright was always to help the authors in their own lifetime not maintaining the monopoly of corporate copyright holders. I'll probably be modded down as flamebait by some paid-for corporate astroturfer now !

Arabic seems like a more useful target

[ajs]

Ports to languages like Farsi are interesting, but maintainers of applications really need to focus on Arabic, Hindi, whatever the primary Chinese used for computers is, Spanish and English. If your application ships with these languages, you cover your bases VERY nicely. Let localized distributions help you out on the smaller languages (*cough*klingon*cough*).

Don't get me wrong, I applaud these people for their work, but package maintainers can easily get caught up in a sort of fad around certain translations, and sometimes that hurts if the biggest languages are not covered well.

On another front, Gnome also supports right-to-left languages [gnome.org], so don't feel you have to chose KDE... choose whichever supports your needs best from an application standpoint.

Re:Please say "Persian" not "Farsi"

[oroshana]

I am Iranian and I speak Farsi. This is actually a hot debate, even within Iran!!! What do we call our language? Well, the main problem with "Persian" is that it harkens back to the days of "Persia" and this is not politically good. When one says anything like Pers-blah it brings to mind the western rule/view of Fars/Pars/Persia/Iran/Aria. Look, the land of today's Iran has been ruled by a wide range of people. It is not a land of set constants. Just like when the country decided to change it's international name from Persia to Iran, the name of the language must also adapt. Both Persian and Farsi are fine! If you say either people will know what you are talking about. The problem with Persia/Persian is that it is a greco-nized version of the ancient name of the persian empire: It sounds somewhere in between Pars and Fars. Depending on what dialect is being spoken it can be pronouced eitherway. For example: one of the current provinced of Iran is "Fars". This is the cultural-center of what used to be the old persian empire. I know this all sounds weird, but really, the only iranians that don't like the word "Farsi" are the really uptight ones that want the monarchy re-established in Iran.. They usually also want the name of the country to be changed back to Persia. But those are very extreme people. Most people don't give a crap.