We're grateful to Juan Jose Amor and Antonio Ismael Olea, coordinators of the LuCAS project for this interview. The LuCAS project is an effort to help get important documentation and Linux information translated into Spanish and in general, to make Linux a little more user-friendly for Spanish speakers.

Linux Online: When did you first hear about Linux?

Juanjo Amor: It was in 1994, I was interested in getting 386BSD from my university when someone told me about a new "clone" that seemed promising. At that moment I really didn't pay too much attention to the person who told me. How wrong I was! Shortly after, I started to fight to copy that pile of disks.

Ismael Olea: I don't really remember the date, but when I started hearing things about Linux in the Unix area on Fidonet, I knew that was what I was looking for for some years: a Unix I could have at home. Even then, I had to wait until I could get a 500 megabyte hard disk to install it!

Linux Online: Were there those sleepless nights and situations where they had to drag you away from the computer?

Juanjo: With LuCAS, luckily that's never happened. I had to spend a few sleepless nights with my university work.

Ismael: Well, there have been a few. But if I had to choose between this and a good party, well, I'd choose the party, of course.

Linux Online: Let's talk about LuCAS. How did this project start?

Juanjo: In 1995, shortly after the "Windows 95 Era" started, there was already a important number of Linux users in Spain that kept in contact by way of Fidonet. That's where Ramon Gutierrez and Alfonso Belloso proposed translating Matt Welsh's "Linux Installation and Getting Started" into Spanish. I signed up and actively participated. I realized that the project needed a web page to help it along which I did at my university. That's where it all started.

Ismael: For my part, even though I didn't directly participate from the start, they've always been able to count on my enthusiasm and since I first connected to the Internet, and from my position as moderator of Fido R34.LINUX, I got out the message about the project as much as I could. I modestly believe that the effort has paid off.

Linux Online: Some people might get the idea that the LuCAS project is only about translating Linux documentation into Spanish, but it goes beyond that. In what other areas are you working at the moment?

Juanjo: At first, LuCAS was only a project that translated the manuals. With time, other projects have sprung up to translate other documentation, programs' standard output etc. We've realized that there are so many projects that commonly use the Spanish language, that we need other types of help. For this reason, we're supporting other projects like the "living glossary" (ORCA) and the "automatic corrector" (COES) as well as others.

At present, LuCAS is practically a "portal" of documentation and in the future, which we hope is the near future, it will really become a system of automatic distributed publishing.

Linux Online: At the moment, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world. This project must be quite ambitious.

Juanjo: Really, we believe it's the third most spoken, but it's one of the most important and probably the fastest growing at present. This is another one of the key points of our enthusiasm for LuCAS: We believe that the documentation in Spanish is helping to get GNU/Linux to a community of users that is enormous and growing constantly.

Linux Online: As we mentioned, Spanish is quite a wide-spread language. Is there a lot of documentation written in Spanish by programmers from Spanish speaking countries?

Ismael: The amount of free documentation that's available depends on the level of technological development of the country and it's clear that in the Spanish speaking countries on both sides [of the Atlantic] there are some extraordinary technical people.

If you do a well planned search, you'll be able to find fantastic resources and even complete books published on the Net.

The problem lies in not using the right publishing methodology (choice and use of the correct format and distribution of the documentation in forums with enough reach) - normally, we don't access these documents. Quite often we find very interesting resources in local groups or at universities that don't get beyond there for the reasons I've mentioned.

Linux Online: There are Linux distributions that have been developed particularly in Spanish. I mention Esware as an example. Do you think we'll see a LuCAS distribution in the future?

Juanjo: That isn't one of our goals. We want to contribute, without a doubt, so that there are distributions that are *totally* in Spanish but we know that initiatives like Esware, Hispafuentes or LinuxPPP are doing a very good job and they already use the resources that LuCAS can provide.

Linux Online: Let's talk now about the future of Linux. At present, Linux is becoming tremendously popular. Is this entirely positive or or do we run the risk of losing the Linux "charm", so to speak?

Ismael: If you want to see the downside, you'll find it in the growing use of GNU/Linux, you'll even find a downside to "free love", if that's what you want. We like the idea of the universal freedom of information. (software, documentation, knowledge, etc.) The more GNU/Linux is used, the closer we'll get to "utopia".

Linux Online: Lately, we've seen venture capital getting behind some Linux projects. Miguel de Icaza and Helixcode is an example of this. Would the LuCAS project be looking for this kind of financing?

Juanjo: For now, we haven't really considered this and I don't think we'll be considering it in the near future.

Ismael: We've never considered the economic side of this, neither in the beginnings of LuCAS nor in any of its different phases, as far as I'm concerned. Although, if some "investment angel" has an offer to make, we'll be pleased to take it into account.

Linux Online: What are some of the projects that you have planned in the near future - conferences, etc?

Juanjo: Well, we'll continue to help get GNU/Linux out there among Spanish speakers and to do this we're actively participating to organize the Third Hispalinux Conference where we'll presenting our project and of course we're active in the organization of this conference, which is the most important GNU/Linux event in Spain.

Ismael: We're also going to participate in other events which we're proud to be invited to. For example, in October we'll be involved in some sessions in "Maratón Linux" which will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina In particular, I'd like to go a little further into free documentation projects, (compiling, creating and using linguistic resources and development of publication techniques for new technology), but this depends a lot on my available free time and lately there's very very little of it.

Linux Online: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.

Ismael/Juanjo: Don't mention it. That's what we're here for!

You can check out the LuCAS Project's home page at http://lucas.hispalinux.es