[IAEP] [SLOBS] [SLOBs] F11+0.88+XO1.* as a SL project

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 23:01, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> El Fri, 25-06-2010 a las 13:23 -0400, Mel Chua escribió:
>
>> 2. cjb and tomeu and mchua are wondering whether that infrastructure
>> access (which you *don't* need SL project status for!) was what the
>> project was asking for, or if there was anything more to the request to
>> become an "official project" - what resources, specifically, would they
>> want from SL that they think becoming a "SL project" will grant them?
>> Bernie, can you respond?
>
> In addition to the hosting and bandwidth, I would like to ask for
> permission to add a link to F11-0.88 to the wiki sidebar, below SoaS.
>
> Cjb said that it was not an issue for OLPC, but Tomeu was still
> concerned that other downstream projects could be negatively affected by
> our endorsement of an XO distribution. What makes us look really biased
> is having just SoaS in our Projects side-bar.

Not sure if I misspoke or if I'm being interpreted wrong, but I have
no problem about SLs "endorsing" any Sugar-related project that is
worth our attention. This of course includes F11-0.88.

> In fact, I exchanged a few emails with a F11-0.88 tester who refused to
> file activity bugs on bugs.sugarlabs.org because "I'm not interested in
> how Sugar runs on desktop machines (nor on Ubuntu, etc.)" :-(
>
> This comment of an OLPCNews reader is even more eloquent:
>
>  http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating_system/the_best_xo_laptop_operating_s.html#comment-296246
>
>
> We seem to have a problem of perception of SL being biased towards
> specific vendors. To fix that, we could either choose to stop working
> with anyone, or we could offer the same service level to any downstream
> project asking for Sugar Labs hosting. Currently, our infrastructure is
> also hosting these partners:
>
>  * OLE - http://www.ole.org
>  * OLE Nepal - http://olenepal.org/
>  * Paraguay Educa (some services)
>  * Karma - http://karma.sugarlabs.org
>  * Somos Azucar - http://somosazucar.org
>  * GCompris (only the git repository)
>  * ZeroInstall (only a package repository)
>
> I would personally *love* to give more visibility to all of these
> through links in our wiki. Only Karma and GCompris would really qualify
> as hosted Projects. The others are partnering organizations. OLE Nepal
> should really be a Local Lab.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, we could even extend the same invitation to
> other Sugar related projects that are being hosted at disparate, obscure
> locations: eXe, Trisquel Sugar, Ubuntu Sugar Remix...
>
> Mel asked an interesting question: what exactly is a Project? Some time
> ago, David Farning studied the issue and posted a criteria for endorsing
> sub-projects modeled after the Eclipse and Apache models, two very large
> and very successful umbrella projects.

So that could be what defines a project, but which are the
consequences of becoming an official project? I would say that it
means that SLs as a community accepts some responsibility about the
goals of the project. That could mean that the marketing,
localization, infrastructure, development, community, etc. teams are
supposed to cater for the needs of each project.

What will help more to the Sugar ecosystem: a big organization that is
willing to take care of everything related to Sugar or several
organizations focused on their aspects of their choose?

I don't think this is an easy decision without precognition powers,
but I'm worried about SLs losing focus.

> In two years of Infrastructure Team coordination, I don't remember ever
> refusing any hosting, syndication or account request. Why? Because I
> believe that "Stop Energy" fundamentally hurts organizations like ours.
> We've been quite successful at hosting activities because there's almost
> zero stop energy in the way of contributors. The same could happen in
> other areas as well.
>
> Unlike a business, we don't need to focus their resources just on
> revenue-making activities. Our fuel actually comes from contributors,
> there's rarely anything to gain by telling them to go away.

Sure, but I don't think that necessarily implies that focus has no value.

Regards,

Tomeu

> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
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