[IAEP] the SoaS term (was: Press release flurry planning...)

David Van Assche dvanassche at gmail.com
Thu Jun 18 14:55:15 EDT 2009


Well, here is where I totally disagree. The term SoaS actually came
from the ubuntu derived Sugar on a stick. so by your logic, as it was
'coined' by an individual who chose to put sugar on a usb stick using
ubuntu, who by the same logic is the sole owner and user of that term.
I think that really hurts Sugar in general. There are now at least 4
different version of SoaS that I know of, and I, having worked hard to
bring one to market, feel it detracts from getting sugar out to the
end users. If we start calling the thing a million different names,
its just going to confuse and alienate people, not let them use it. In
essence the experience should be very similar regardless of distro
use, but different packagers will choose to package different things
(case in point being debian which till recently only wanted to
concentrate on 8.2) At events and conferences, when we choose to write
these usb sticks or give out cdroms with sugar, the user should have a
choice as to which underlying distro he wants to have (and yes it does
make a difference), but it should still be called what it actualls is
- Sugar on a usb stick. So when I say agnosticate the term, I mean use
the term as it is semantically appropriate. I for one, will use that
term to define openSUSE running as the base with sugar running on top
of it, and will market it as such. But I will explain that it is
available in multiple flavours....

post continues below...

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Jonas Smedegaard<dr at jones.dk> wrote:

<---trim--->

>>Anyway, the point is not to tie SoaS to one distro... there are enough
>>people willing to help for the different distros , and the more
>>markets the better right?
>
> I completely disagree.
>
> To me, SoaS is a specific distribution coined by Sugar enthusiasts (who
> happen to also most/all of them also to be Sugar developers).
>
> This particular distribution is derived from Fedora.  It might be that
> in the future they decide to switch to Ubuntu or OpenSuSe as platform
> for their development.
>
> It might also be that other distributions emerge based on other major
> distributions.
>
> Whatever happens, let each distribution choose their own name.  Or
> discuss with them to change name - I really don't care.
>
> What concerns me is that Sugarlabs do not dictate naming of external
> projects.

I don't really get what you mean here...

>
> ...and now comes the fun part: Do Sugarlabs feel that SoaS is not
> "external"?

I don't get what is meant by this... can u elaborate?

> I recomend to tream SoaS as a distribution, and I recommend Sugarlabs to
> leave the "distribution" task to others.  Be friendly to any
> distribution that includes Sugar - sure - but don't take on that
> challenge yourself.  There is plenty to do that is more Sugar-specific

what challenge exactly?

kind Regards,
David Van Assche


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