[IAEP] Funding

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 5:14 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at isforinsects.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> Should we choose to support just a single distribution, we are going
>> to run into distribution wars both on the community and on the
>> deployment side, so we really need to be at a cross-distribution
>> level, which is where we are heading, but this is a lot to ask of an
>> all volunteer community.
>
> Agreed.  I almost think that sugarlabs needs funding outside of
> distributors? Someone who's interested, but not necessarily dependent
> on one implementation of Sugar
>

Another issue is that Linux distributors are not going to be large
funders. Most are making pennies on the dollar of revenue that they
can send to outside projects/groups. In any sort of case, Sugarlabs
would require a business plan, a dog and pony show, goals, milestones,
etc that would make investors (be they companies or various
'non-profits') to feel justified in donating.


>> I can imagine there would be a need for Sugar consultants--both
>> technical and pedagogical--but it is not clear that Sugar Labs needs
>> to be more than a clearinghouse for such services.
>
>
> I could see US schools wanting to implement Sugar in a computer lab.
> While right now this is something that we want anyone to be able to
> do.  Many school districts I'm sure would just hire someone to do it.

With various funding changes.. there is the need to be 'certified'. I
would see this as a future revenue source for SugarLabs in that they
could come up with a reliable testing mechanism for a certification in
various aspects. However that would be well into the future of any
project.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"