Community Member Monday: Jwtiyar Ali

Today we’re talking to Jwtiyar Ali, who is helping to localise LibreOffice into Kurdish…

To start with, tell us a bit about yourself!

Hey! I live in the Kurdistan region, in the north of Iraq – the city of Sulaymaniyah. I have an MSc in Physics, but I love computer science too. Currently I am working in the Cement Quality Control Department at a cement factory, as a physicist.

I do translations for many open source projects such as Ubuntu, Gimp, Firefox etc., leading these translation projects. My hobbies are following new open source projects and seeing how they can be more competitive. I also like football, walking, and reading Python programming courses in my free time.

What are the opportunities and challenges for promoting/using free software and LibreOffice in your region?

In my country, promoting open source apps and systems is a very big challenge because most people – maybe 90% – use proprietary apps, because they don’t hear about or know about open source alternatives.

So we in the team at www.chawg.org decided to make a website to introduce many open source projects. We created a wiki platform and a forum for that reason – and now we have Facebook groups and pages.

In my opinion, an opportunity is to provide users with more guides, and make a comparison between LibreOffice with other apps. Show users what LibreOffice can do that others apps can’t. Also, show people that LibreOffice can do the same things – or even more – with their daily work, and send them articles to educate them about the software.

What are you doing in the LibreOffice project right now?

I am translating LibreOffice. I hope to see LibreOffice in my language – that would be perfect. Also, it would help users to interact with LibreOffice more often than before.

How did you get involved in LibreOffice, and what was the experience like?

My love for open source projects made me engage with LibreOffice and the big community behind it. Being in the community made me feel that I wasn’t working in a specific part of the world – but people around the world can benefit from what I do.

The experience was amazing, because I didn’t know beforehand that we have a great app like LibreOffice.

Anything else you want to add?

I want to thank everyone who helped me to join this great community. My passion for LibreOffice has no borders, and I hope to see other open source projects grow faster than ever. The best part of the community is that we all trust in open source and teamwork.

Thesedays, I am promoting LibreOffice to my colleagues and friends. Also, I help them to fix any problems that they may face it during installing or when using the suite.

Thanks to Jwtiyar for all his contributions! Our native language communities are always open for more help – so if you want LibreOffice and its website localised in your language, give us a hand!