Help me understand Patrick's words
 

Hello,

I, with the help of members of forum.slackware.pl, am attempting to translate the recent interview with Patrick Volkerding. We don't agree with something and I need help understanding Pat's words here:

"The challenge over the next five years will be to remain true to Slackware's roots in UNIX philosophy as other projects and developers to may have completely different goals contribute to Linux as a whole."

English is not my first language and I find "to may" strange. Is it only me or is this correct? Anyway...

Did he (or you, if it's the man himself reading this :) mean that:
1. [Slackware] and [other projects], each having different philosophy and goals, both contribute to Linux as a whole or
2. just [other projects] have different philosophy and goals to contribute to Linux as a whole.

"to may" is not correct English - likely a mistranslation.

The correct version is almost certainly "as other projects and developers who may have completely different goals..."

I think it was just a mistake. I suspect this is what was meant:

The challenge over the next five years will be to remain true to Slackware's roots in UNIX philosophy as other projects and developers may have completely different goals on contributing to Linux as a whole.

I was wrong then. Thanks a lot for clearing this up :)

Is there any chance of getting involved in the translation project?

Perhaps he said : "...philosophy as other projects, and developers too, may have...."
That would (I think) be acceptable English. Although Pat is American, and they haven't spoken English there for years either :-)

This reminds me of something I saw on a website when an American friend was planning to visit my country (South Africa). Some young American asked "Will we be able to speak English there ?", to which the reply was, "Yes, but you'll have to learn it first".

I am sorry, I couldn't help it...

Pity the poor human Earth Pink who comes looking for a SIMPLE, SHORT EXPLANATION of Patrick's words, one that he or she can UNDERSTAND QUICKLY. If LQ could provide that, Slackware would be bigger than Mint or Ubuntu by now -- and probably much, much worse.

A True Slacker, however, understands EVERYTHING, INSTANTLY upon exposure to the Word or even just the ChangeLog of Pat.

The next step after reading the Patrick Volkerding interview (links above) would be to procure THE SLACKBOOK and its companion volume, LINUX COMPLETE REFERENCE, from the Slackware store, EBay, or better bookstores anywhere. (The feature-length video, ARISE!, will do in a pinch for illiterates.) There are samples of these masterpieces and other primal Slackware liturgy in the BOOK section.

There are also several SLAQs and FAQs from various Slackers who, over the years, did their very best to explain the unexplainable.

lol, solarfields :D

Well, the way I came up with going into this "project" is quite crude. I publish my progress in google docs while members of forum.slackware.pl read it and post suggestions. I make necessary changes and go on translating the next batch of text.
So far it looks like this:
~25% translated by me
~25% translated by ydoom
lots of corrections by mina86 and one by alekow
~50% to go

I'm not sure what kind of involvement you had in mind. If you know Polish you can certainly post suggestions to correct something or even translate a question or ten. Here's the link to the topic where I post my translation. The latest versions are at the end of my last post.

Excellent. I'll have a look tonight. I have a pretty solid grasp of Polish - it is my native tongue, after all:)

To in this case may mean also. "...other projects and developers also may have completely...".

Hi there! That was a thinko that slipped through my editing: "to" should have been "that".

On the Positive outlook:
I believe that if Slackware can maintain to stay true to its UNIX roots we will have a lot of converts escaping from other distros which will make the transition easier for us all.

LOL.

He's fallible, he's fallible!!!

:)

That's another illusion shattered. First they told me there was no Santa Claus, now this...it's too much to bear. :cry: