[Its.an.education.project] It's a community-driven project, not a fork project!

Thu May 8 03:35:20 CEST 2008

Hello everyone,

I was contacted by several people who expressed concern regarding a
"fork" of Sugar and for other disruptions to its development.  Please
be assured, there are no plans to fork Sugar: we need to focus our
limited resources on a unified effort.

However, the community is discussing a "spin-off" of Sugar,
decentralizing control over the project as it expands to more hardware
and distributions.  Hopefully, OLPC will be a leading contributor, but
not the only one.

In Nicholas' own words, Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux
platforms, and to run on...*cough* err... yes, even Windows! -- if someone
shows up who is willing to do the work!

A prerequisite to get companies and individuals with different goals
working together productively is that no single entity controls the
game by fiat.  It has to be the "Will of People".

In a community-driven process, you can influence decisions in two primary ways:
 1) by contributing resources to make things happen; and
 2) by convincing others of your great ideas.

FAQ:

Q: Isn't this just anarchy?
A: No, it's somewhere between a meritocracy and a democracy.

Q: Does it work in practice?
A: Linux and a lot of other successful software is developed this way.

Q: Isn't this "community" another name for "communism"?
A: Red Hat, Novell and Canonical are large, for-profit enterprises
   based in the US and the UK.  Not exactly communists in my book,
   although the first two have suspiciously red logos and Canonical's
   tends to red :-)

Q: Doesn't a project need strong and capable leadership?
A: This process tends to select the most capable leaders naturally.

Q: How do you ensure that direct competitors will play fairly to each other?
A: The GPL prevents pillage and public shame should prevent
   misconduct.  Nothing prevents incompetence or laziness, but those get
   filtered out quickly.