[IAEP] SoaS change of direction: heads-up on convos in other lists

[Rita Freudenberg]

What's the reason that Etoys isn't part of the bundle anymore? Are  
there any technical problems? We do not expect the Sugar developers to  
fix them. I do like Tomeus suggestions below very much.

Rita

Von meinem iPhone gesendet

Am 22.03.2010 um 10:35 schrieb Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net>:

> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 18:10, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 4:54 PM, Martin Langhoff
>> <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com 
>>> > wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com>  
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> The problem with this approach is that it renders SoaS  
>>>>> ineffective for
>>>>> new tryers of Sugar (i.e. the overwhelming majority of teachers  
>>>>> and
>>>>> parents we are trying to reach).
>>>>
>>>> I don't think it will be any less ineffective than having 20
>>>> activities of which half have issues, crash or just don't run.
>>>
>>> Are people saying _only 6 activities work reliably?_
>>>
>>> My question of "which is it?" was assuming there are more than 6  
>>> that
>>> run well, demo well, maintained, etc. So it meant "which plan is  
>>> it, 6
>>> activities that allow downloading and installing of more, or the  
>>> good
>>> ones?"
>>>
>>> If there are only 6 good ones...  would focus on making that list  
>>> longer.
>>>
>>> Did APIs break with Sugar churn, Fedora churn? Developers upload
>>> without testing? (Rethorical! Flamefest warning! Those questions are
>>> bound to be a flamefest blaming people who don't deserve to be
>>> blamed... :-( )
>>
>> I think some of or all of the above are to blame. I'm still trying to
>> get time to test. I should do so in the next couple of weeks. Record
>> is one of the classic ones with issues. It was broken horribly for
>> SOAS-2 and possibly even v1 but there's been no real attempt to fix
>> it. Part of it is also that to be in Fedora the precompiled binary
>> crud needs to be removed and in a lot of cases Activity developers
>> don't test it with the native libraries. Also I know Write isn't
>> currently on the list because it doesn't work properly [1] but
>> obviously it would be a good one to have as its a great demo of the
>> collaboration.
>>
>> We also want to get away from the point where a few people are  
>> running
>> around doing 20 hour days trying to get the release out the door.
>>
>> I know just prior to to the last release that Sebastian was
>> re-spinning the release into the early hours of the morning to fix
>> Activity bugs to get the release out the door on time for marketing
>> the day before an exam. If people aren't going to spend the time to
>> make sure their activity works prior to a release there's only only
>> limited time the main people have to do the testing along with all  
>> the
>> other release process as well as getting on with the rest of their
>> life. So I think its better we ship with less Activities better  
>> tested
>> that cover the core functionality.
>
> FWIW, Peter's words resonate with my feelings on this issue, but maybe
> this change could have been communicated differently (or maybe I'm
> misunderstanding its ultimate cause).
>
> How I see this issue is that the Sugar community has come to expect
> the SoaS maintainer(s) to test dozens of activities each release cycle
> and fix all the issues that may have crept in. Of course, this is an
> unreasonable expectation and the SoaS team has decided to reduce the
> scope of their work so it becomes more doable.
>
> What the SoaS team could have said instead of "we'll ship half a dozen
> activities", is "we have agreed on a criteria for activities that are
> to be included in a SoaS release". Such a criteria could have been
> something like:
>
> - the activity has been tested and works with the last Sugar release,
>
> - the community has voted this activity as sufficiently relevant to be
> present in SoaS,
>
> - the activity has a maintainer that will react to issues with the
> activity, answer questions, etc.
>
> - the activity has been packaged as a rpm and is part of Fedora.
>
> This may be more effective in tackling with the root cause, which I
> feel to be unreasonable expectation for the actual resources. The
> community would understand that the SoaS team currently doesn't have
> enough resources to include so many activities, and also would feel
> compelled to find more resources to maintain activities.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> Peter
>>
>> [1] http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1767
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>>
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