[IAEP] Funding

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good question to which there is not a definitive answer yet. The model
> I have been kicking around in my head is to have a small team that
> keeps its focus on top the various infrastructure needs of the
> community and raises money to support community gatherings and such
> incidentals as the filing of trademarks (expensive), etc.
>
> We've also been discussing other needs and models for supporting Sugar
> development and Sugar deployments. To what extent should we strive
> towards having an in-house team dedicated to such efforts? I lean
> towards a minimal footprint in keeping with the spirit of maintaining
> a diverse and distributed project, but it has been pointed out that
> model is asking perhaps too much at times. Plus it is a very young
> effort and will need some nurturing to reach a level of stability.
>
> We will need so some commitment of engineering resources from industry
> and other parties interested in Sugar as well as some commitment to
> Sugar Labs itself.
>
> These commitments would scale depending upon how much work is required
> (for a port or some necessary customization). At a minimum we'll need
> the commitment of liaisons from industry and deployments and enough of
> a community with whom they can reliably interact.
>
> The types of things that need to be worked on (by someone) include
> support for different distributions (and operating systems?), hardware
> platforms, localization, maintenance of existing activities, support
> for new activities, QA, documentation, evaluation, storytelling, etc.
> Some of these things require bootstrapping; some may require dedicated
> resources.
>
> If we leave things entirely up to hardware vendors and their partners,
> this would require an unrealistic commitment of engineering resources
> on their side (at least initially) and there is little evidence of
> their commitment to resources beyond engineering; OLPC has made such a
> commitment in the past, but it is not yet clear they will continue or
> that others would (could) follow their example.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> -walter

My view in general is that somebody needs to step up to all of the
challenges that OLPC considers out of scope, and it might as well be
us, since I don't see anybody else doing it.

We need to look at another side of the issue. It is all very well to
minimize our demands on society, and it is often good to have a
certain underabundance of resources in order to foster the can-do
spirit and to keep our work in line with conditions among the poorest
of our clients. But real money is available for tackling real
problems.

* Pierre Omidyar gave his alma mater, Tufts University, $100 million
for a microfinance program.
* Ted Turner gave a billion dollars worth of stock to the UN.
* Now that dual-boot XOs are imminent, it is possible to approach the
Gates Foundation for funding.
* Soros has a strong interest in real education for Open Societies.
* Barack Obama proposes to double US international aid, and I suspect
he is going to have trouble finding useful things to do with all that
money.

Also, there are endless _profitable_ possibilities to move development
forward through IT and other education and business creation. It makes
sense (to me, anyway) to jettison the hand-to-mouth funding model of
almost all non-profits in favor of self-funding programs, as
demonstrated by the Grameen Bank and other such bottom-of-pyramid
enterprises that have attracted billions of dollars of investment from
global corporations, governments, and the formerly dirt poor. That
way, we can actually deliver the results of our work world-wide.

I would love to have a hand in creating the combined grant
application/business plan for all of this, and to bring in experts
from my network. I broached some of this with Iqbal Qadir of Grameen
Phone and MIT last week at one of Stewart Brand's events, and he says
he would like to talk with you some more, Walter.

If you personally want to stick to educational software, we can still
make that a part of something much bigger, and bring in people to deal
with the other issues in a framework of (Hey, wow!) collaborative
discovery.

> On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a plan yet for funding SugarLabs and having paid staff?
>>
>> --
>> Edward Cherlin
>> End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
>> http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
>> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
>> _______________________________________________
>> Its.an.education.project mailing list
>> Its.an.education.project at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project
>>
>



-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay