[IAEP] [SLOBS] [Sugar-devel] SoaS: Searching for Decision Panel volunteers.

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:47, Daniel Drake <dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
> 2009/9/20 Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>:
>> I can't volunteer to serve as a member of the volunteer panel, but I'd
>> like to offer my viewpoint on this issue.
>
> I agree and I also feel that we have consensus on those 2 things (SL
> should promote SoaS, SL should treat distributors equally).
> The 3rd, about naming, is where we have conflicting viewpoints.  Some
> feel that the "sugar on a stick" name should be permanently assigned
> to Sebastian's Fedora-based project, but there are some opposing
> viewpoints:
>
> Sean wrote:
> "Of course, such a scenario raises other questions. If Fedora SoaS is
> the official version offered to parents and teachers, what happens if
> a different distro does a better job with a liveUSB implementation?
> The day a liveUSB version of Sugar contains a risk-free hard-drive
> installer (if such a thing is even possible) and close integration
> with the XS server, entire fleets of schools' machines can be flipped
> to Sugar. Should that better version become Sugar on a Stick? My
> answer is yes - because it is Sugar Labs building up the brand equity
> in Sugar on a Stick, and it is Sugar Labs that should have final say
> about what it is and what it means."
>
> Tomeu wrote:
> "I think the problem is that SLs may want to market an user-end distro
> and only one, and call it the same regardless of the underlying
> technologies, because the user doesn't care about those."

Please note that "SLs may", I'm not personally decided on one way or
the other, I also see as very important that the community behind a
particular flavor of SoaS has a strong identity that cannot be changed
by anyone external to it.

As a parallel, Linux Caixa Mágica is the name for a product, Caixa
Mágica Software the name of the company behind it, and its community
is called Caixa Mágica Community. Though the community can submit
packages for approval and distribution, my understanding is that most
of the distro work is done by employees at Caixa Mágica Software.

They have actually changed once from OpenSUSE to Mandriva as the base
of their distro, but in that case I would expect that the company just
decided it internally and its employees just stopped working on one
code base and started using the other. AFAIK, no names were changed,
nor for the product, nor the company, nor the community. I bet some
people in the community didn't liked it, some might have left it, but
that didn't affected the continuity of the project.

The crucial difference to our situation is that we have a team for
every distro and chances are that those working on one are not going
to switch teams and start using another distro as the base of their
work.

So, a possible solution could be calling the product marketed by SLs
"Sugar on a Stick" and each individual team and product "Fedora Sugar
on a Stick", "OpenSUSE Sugar on a Stick", etc. From time to time SLs
would decide to call and market as "Sugar on a Stick" a particular
release of a particular flavor. This decision process should be very
transparent and fair, of course.

Would that work for everyone? Any other proposals?

> Yamandu wrote:
> "I believe SL should support and highlight the best, generally
> allowing the others to call themselves "a" SOAS if they want to, and
> also be mentioned in SL web pages and presentations, with the
> reasonable caveat that they are even more so "works in progress" than
> the highlighted SOAS"
>
>
> I don't quite understand this decision panel stuff.
> Is a different decision panel elected every time there is an undecided
> issue at hand? Or do we elect one group that remains in place for all
> unanswered questions, present and future?
>
> Everyone here seems to already have their own opinions already, and we
> have already discussed them, provided our own reasoning, and read the
> views of others. So it seems like the vote of the decision panel would
> only be unanimous if you were to pick people only on 1 side of the
> argument.. and the number of votes each way would depend exactly on
> who you pick for it.
>
> Why can't the oversight board make decisions directly? It seems to me
> that they were voted for based on the fact we trust their vision for
> the direction of sugarlabs. and it would save us a lot of time and
> email...

I think the decision panel is supposed to have a better knowledge of
the matter at hand than the members of the oversight board. I can see
this working better in practice in bigger community than us.

SLOBs are chosen by their capacity to push forward SLs' mission but
they might not be the best prepared to take any decision that is
presented to them.

Regards,

Tomeu

-- 
«Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
Farning