Unrelated team Added

Hi Ahmed,

Thanks for raising up your concerns. Let me try to give a bit of background info and address the points in your request.

The Launchpad Translators group, of which the lp-l10n-ar is part of, is a confederation of teams responsible for the translation of Open Source software hosted in Launchpad. Launchpad makes available two types of products for translation:

* Projects: such as e.g. Chromium (https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser)
* Distributions: such as Ubuntu (https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu)

Ubuntu is obviously a key product in Launchpad, important enough to have a translation group of its own, the Ubuntu Translators group. But still, it falls under the umbrella of sofware that can be translated in Launchpad.

It's for this reason that we often recommend to translation teams having an lp-l10n-* umbrella team including ubuntu-l10n-* as a subteam. With this approach we mirror the above relationship in translation groups while keeping a separation between Ubuntu and the other projects.

By having an ubuntu-l10n-* team as a subteam of lp-l10n-*

 * The lp-l10n-* team is already joined by a team of experienced translators
 * Ubuntu Translators are able to translate other projects in Launchpad assigned to the Launchpad Translators
 group
 * You can still separate what each team can translate:
    * Direct members of ubuntu-l10n-* will be able to translate Ubuntu and projects assigned to Launchpad Translators
    * Direct members of lp-l10n-* who are not part of ubuntu-l10n-* will only be able to translate projects assigned to Launchpad Translators, but will not be able to translate Ubuntu.

> 1. the two teams are totally unrelated, lp-l10n-ar is responsible for translating lp-hosted projects, while ubuntu-l10n-ar is responsible for Ubuntu's messeges only.

That's correct, although as explained above, the teams are not entirely unrelated: Launchpad Translators are appointed to translate software in Launchpad, and Ubuntu falls under that category. It just happens to be big enough to have a translation team of its own.

> By adding them to each other, we force every Ubuntu-Only contributer to be responsible for other OSS on lp, too.

No one is forcing anyone to translate anything, regardless of which team you are part of. As a voluntary contributor, you are free to decide which projects you want to contribute to.

> 2. Doing this will violate the members' freedom to choose which job to take, and which responsibility to bear.

As stated above, no one is forcing anyone or compromising anyone's freedom. Being part of the lp-l10n-* team does not mean that contributors are forced to translate software in Launchpad. Voluntary contributors can organize their time in the best way they see fit and choose what they can (or want to) translate.

> 3. Adding the two teams occured by admin(Usama) himself only, and WITHOUT any kind of consultation to the ~ubuntu-l10n-ar team members!!!!!!!

I agree with this point, for the benefit of transparency and to have everyone on board, there should have been some kind of announcement on the ubuntu-l10n-ara translators list. I'll ask Usama to see if he can do that.

I see no particular problem about ubuntu-l10n-ar being a subteam of lp-l10n-ar. Of course, this is just my personal opinion and you are free to dispute that, but if you do, I'd like to ask you to make sure it is the position of the whole ubuntu-l10n team and not just a personal one.

Your team has got a public mailing list, and I see no public record of a discussion about this, at least in the last couple of months. My recommendation would be for you guys to discuss it as a team there and come up with a resolution on what to do. If, after that, you still need external mediation to resolve this, I'll be more than happy to help.

After having seen the difficulties and discussions around getting the lp-l10n-ar team appointed [1], I would personally love to see it functioning without conflict.

Thanks.

Regards,
David.

[1] https://answers.edge.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/108979