[IAEP] Sugar Labs market analysis

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 17:16, 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.  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.

Isn't Moodle in the same position? What about Skolelinux? Can we learn
from those projects?

Regards,

Tomeu

> 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.
>
> 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 to be synomyous with 'community driven, freely available, openly
> developed.'  Caroline, wearing her educator hat, asks why is it a FLOS
> _SOFTWARE_ project?  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.
>
> - 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.
>
> - 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' individual smaller competitors who threaten their
> existing markets.
>
> Not only does Sugar Labs need to build the sugar product, we need to
> either build or encourage others to build markets around Sugar.
>
> This leaves Sugar Labs with three simultaneous challenges; creating
> technical solutions, creating educational solutions, and creating the
> market.  How hard can that be:)
>
> david
>
> --
> David Farning
> Sugar Labs
> www.sugarlabs.org
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