[Its.an.education.project] Manifest

[Bernie Innocenti]

Martin Langhoff wrote:

> Both Debian and Ubuntu have ended up distributing any software that is
> legal for them to distribute, while making a clear distinction for
> those users that want to remain free. So the purists and the
> pragmatists can live together in harmony.

Such arrangement pleases me too.

Just wanted to point out that others, such as Stallman for example,
may beg to differ. The FSF does no longer endorse Debian and removed
all links to their web site since when their installer proposes the
"non-free" repository.

> But do we need any of this? Will we need any of this?

Probably not.  Let's just handle this problem lazily, the first
time a real-world issue arises, eh?

> Can't we avoid the huge effort that forking things entails?
>
> If we
>  - focus on work on a given distro - we can run a mini-repo with our packages
>  - run our own git repos but request timely merges from the olpc team

I had in mind piggybacking on distros like this too.  But if we focus
on just one distro we'd not enlarge the scope of Sugar, which
was one of the major reasons for making it more independent of OLPC.

Also, *maybe* we can save us the hassle of maintaining vendor trees
until there are few vendors (exactly one at this time).
If we end up needing it, then we can count on git being designed with
this type of workflow in mind, and makes it really easy.

But let's change just one major thing at a time, or we'll end up
like KDE4 <g>.


> we'll maximise the effort in moving forward, and minimise the effort
> spent in things that don't really move us forward. Of course we can
> "cut our own releases" with LiveCDs based on the combined repos, but I
> would make every effort to work very closely to - say - Ubuntu or
> Debian or Fedora.

Yes, that's my number (2) in a list of goals I'm preparing off list.

I'm also using the inertia excuse to save us a long discussion about
which distro is the best one.  OLPC's OS is Fedora derived, and it's
our only vendor for now.  Let's lazily add support for other vendors
when either:

 - volunteers approach us and offer to do the packaging work;

 - or it's a required step to support a platform (The Classmate
   is Ubuntu based, the EEE PC is Xandros).

At all costs, WE MUST AVOID THE DISTRO WARS!


>>  Personally, I would recommend moving to GPLv3 to help ensuring that
>>  nobody could use our software on a locked-down machine that would prevent
> 
> Legally lockout bitfrost via GPLv3's? Hmmmm :-(

BitFrost is compatible with the GPLv3, as long as the hardware
vendor also offers the developer key upon request.  OLPC has already
been distributing plenty of GPLv3 code for a while.

But a shiny Windows port of Sugar would probably not have any
GPLv3 code in it.  Brrr....

-- 
   \___/
  _| o |  Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
  \|_X_|  "It's an education project, not a laptop project!"