I was going through one of the YouTube channels that I used to browse as a kid, called "video translator". I wondered who was behind it. I found that it's handel is OsamaKhalid. I suspect that it refers to Dr. Osama Khalid, MD, who is arrested by the Saudi regime. While looking, I also found that he's a GNU maintainer too, which is surprising. I found this moving page on his website:

حينما أعجز…

أنشئت هذه الصفحة على نهج مجتمع الخارقين الذين كانوا يتنادرون: "من سيعتني بالكود الذي كتبناه حين نموت؟" (مثال: آرون سوارتز وإِرك ريموند).

هذا الموقع: أن يبقى هذا الموقع (وبدون تغيير) طالما كان ذلك ممكنا. في حال وجدت مسودات أو كتابات غير منشورة، ينبغي نشرها.

المشاريع: نادرًا ما أعمل على المشاريع وحيدًا. ثمّة دائمًا شركاء/شريكات لديهم وصول لكلمات السر مثلا. الأصل أن تلك المشاريع لابد أن تستمر. ولذا أوصي أن تسند الإدارة التقنية للمشاريع التي أدرتها لمن تستطيع/يستطيع مواصلة ذلك.

أن يُقسم ثلث ما أملك من أصول يمكن تسييلها (أموال، استثمارات) بين أرشيف الإنترنت ومجلس رعاية حريّة البرمجيات ومؤسسة الجبهة الإلكترونية.

الكود: أن يُصدر كل ما يُعثر عليه من كود كتبته بآخر نسخة من رخصة غنو أفيرو العمومية وما تلاها.

هذه الصفحة: أن تُحدّث بما حدث.

التوقيع. كُتب في يوليو 2020.

I feel very sad for him because he's still arrested, I find a lot of similarities and interests between myself and him (the obsession of translating Chomsky to Arabic and being into FOSS).

• [2026-04-18 Sat 19:30] I found that yeah, indeed he was the author of that channel, I found a reference to the pages in his website (archive link), but looks like he deleted them, maybe in the hope of it helping his release.

I've been trying to go though his website in the waybackmachine, however, getting:

This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

I hope that he gets his freedom sooner, and I get to learn more about him. And I hope too that prison won't kill his fine soul or make it wither.

• [2026-04-18 Sat 19:58] some mentions of Osama online that I found:

  • https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/tinyogg
  • When he became a GNU contributor: https://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/osama-khalid. He was only a highschooler, which is very impressive. I feel even more sad that such a brliant kid is being in prison. His GitHub: https://github.com/osamak

I don't see him being a very active person, but perhaps his work on Wikipedia was what got the government interested in him.

I found a connection between OsamaK and Khaled Hosny. I never interacted with Khaled, but I remember that he shared a post of mine on his mastodon account.¹ Anyway, it's no surprise that both might have interacted with each other, but what's interesting is that I found out that both studied medicine. I knew that Osama was a doctor, but I was surprised to know that Khaled too studied medicine. I wonder if Khaled practices any medical work anymore.