[IAEP] Sugar Labs market analysis

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 8:16 AM, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> Fred Grose has started an interesting wiki page at
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Sugar_Labs/Roadmap discussing the
> Sugar Labs roadmap.

Let's see whether I can add anything. Yes. I'll put the Project
category on [[Creating textbooks]]. Done.

> One of the interesting parts of that page is the
> discussion about 'what is FLOSS?'  In particular it highlights the
> communication challenges between participates in a project which
> crosses the Technology - Education barrier.
>
> Sugar Labs is in rather unique position.
>
> The project bridges the gap between software and education using
> collaborative development methodologies.
>
> On the plus side:
>
> 1.  Both software development and education have strong histories of
> community supported successes stories.  You just need to look to your
> local PTA and youth sports leagues to see the passion that interested
> parents have in their children's development.  One the software side,
> the existence and success of projects like Linux and Fire Fox prove
> that community driven software development _can_ work.

Also home schooling, unschooling, etc.

> 2. The vision and mission of Sugar Labs is extremely compelling to
> both groups.  Many developers are intrigued by the possibility of
> creating a great tool to help kids learn.  Educators are interested in
> leveraging new technologies to improve their ability to teach.
>
> On the negative side:
>
> 1. There are some pretty big cultural and language gaps between the
> two groups which we will have to merge.  On the talk page mentioned
> above, it looks like Fred, wearing his developer hat, uses the acronym
> FLOSS

Free/Libre/Open Source Software, as at FLOSS Manuals.

> to be synomyous with 'community driven, freely available, openly
> developed.'  Caroline, wearing her educator hat, asks why is it a FLOS
> _SOFTWARE_ project?

There is no generally-accepted term covering Free Software, Creative
Commons content, and Open Source _hardware_. Teachers are in the
content space with textbooks and other education products, and with
the proposed Digital Learning Materials under Free/Open Source/CC
licenses. So of course they are confused. Everybody is.

> I hope they both mean 'Sugar Labs the community
> driven education project which leverages open source software
> development techniques and methodologies... :)
>
> 2. There is no established market for computers in the early childhood
> education market.

That is true within schools, and not quite entirely true in the home
market. There are computerized teaching devices of many kinds for
elementary grades and even pre-school. None of them is a
general-purpose, user-programmable computer. There is a huge amount of
software for children to use, but marketed mainly to parents, that
claims to serve an educational purpose.

I wrote about this market in 1981. My boss at Strategic, Inc., decided
to call it "edutainment". I call it shovelware. Overpriced, overhyped,
and underperforming. There is, of course, real software for education
going back to the 1960s, including Smalltalk and Logo. Powerful tools
for powerful ideas. Unfortunately, we have failed to make them
accessible to parents and teachers until now. They still have little
or no idea how to use them.

> - aside -
>
> Market is a very overloaded word in business and economics.  At one
> level it can refer simply to customers.  On a second level. A market
> is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions,
> procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons
> trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the
> economy.

The principal questions that market research were supposed to answer were

o How many potential buyers, at what levels
o Market share
o Total revenue growth

together with profiles of the technology and market strategy of the
largest companies, and expected future technology developments.
Regulation often came into the picture, as well.

> - end aside -
>
> There is no established market for computers in early childhood
> education for a number of reasons.  It has not yet proven financially
> viable for existing software or hardware vendors to build a business
> in the market.  Existing software and hardware vendors are willing and
> able to 'drive out'

or buy out

> individual smaller competitors who threaten their
> existing markets.

They have not driven out OLPC. The economics of Free Software differ
greatly from the economics of manufacturing, and of proprietary
software. OLPC benefits from being a non-profit, with a non-profit
purpose, and from the network effects of Linux and of software for
collaboration.

> Not only does Sugar Labs need to build the sugar product, we need to
> either build or encourage others to build markets around Sugar.

Earth Treasury (me) has identified essential markets and opportunities in

o Renewable power
o Wireless Internet
o Internet-enabled microfinance
o Free Digital Learning Materials

Each of these is necessary for the success of the laptop+Sugar
program. There are many more opportunities that all of this enables,
that are essential to ending poverty and oppression. Water, food,
health care, IT services, and all of the material products needed for
the emerging businesses and for households.

> This leaves Sugar Labs with three simultaneous challenges; creating
> technical solutions, creating educational solutions, and creating the
> market.  How hard can that be:)

It will all inevitably happen. The questions are, Where we can speed
it up, and How can we improve the outcome? This calls for thousands of
individual answers made available to many millions of people. Our
biggest lack is people who believe in what we are doing: That it is
possible, and that it is worth their while to join in.

> david
>
> --
> David Farning
> Sugar Labs
> www.sugarlabs.org
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
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>



-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)