[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Supporting Sugar .88 on the XO1

[David Farning]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 4:46 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 02:04, David Farning <dfarning at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Paul Fox <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
>>> david wrote:
>>>  > As Bernie announced, we working on supporting Sugar .88 on the XO-1.
>>>
>>> hi david --
>>>
>>> for those of us joining this thread late, can you expand on what/who
>>> you mean by "we"?  (or tell me to read the archives, if that's
>>> more appropriate.)
>>
>> Sorry, By we, I mean Activity Central and compnay that Bernie,
>> Caroline, and I have started to support OLPC and Sugar deployments.
>>
>> It is going to take me awhile to figure out how to communicate with
>> the community.  I would like to keep the larger Sugar and OLPC
>> projects aware of what our company is doing.  But, I don't what it to
>> sound like a press release of pitch for the company:)
>
> Any blog we could syndicate in the planet(s)?

Excellent point,

I'll start a blog and request that it be syndicated on the Sugar Labs
and OLPC planets.

> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> david
>>> paul
>>>
>>>
>>>  > This projects is customer driven by the deployment in Paraguay.  They,
>>>  > along with bernie, made a decision that it would be more useful,
>>>  > usable, and cost effective to settle on .88 rather than .82.  This
>>>  > strictly a decision made by a single deployment, which I support.
>>>  >
>>>  > As an ecosystem we can make lists of Pros on Cons why this is a good
>>>  > or bad decision and why I am an idiot.  At the end of the day this was
>>>  > a decision made by a deployment.  The primary reason for this decision
>>>  > is that the deployment does not yet has an established base of .82
>>>  > machines.  Something we need to be aware of as developers is that
>>>  > deployments think on a much longer scale.  As developers, if we have a
>>>  > bug we can commit a fix and rebuild within a few days.  Deployments
>>>  > can take weeks if not months to push a minor update.
>>>  >
>>>  > Major version upgrades are something developers can do every six
>>>  > months.  From my experience a couple couple of weeks of 'hmmm,  better
>>>  > file a bug on that' and I have well running machines after an upgrade.
>>>  >  For a enterprise, such as a deployment, the decision to update
>>>  > becomes much harder and takes much longer to implement. As Martin
>>>  > pointed out, a significant amount of Quality Assurance goes into a
>>>  > deployment upgrade.  Not only do the hardware, OS, and learning
>>>  > platform need to work together, all infrastructure, activities and
>>>  > third party applications must also work after the update.  The problem
>>>  > just got significantly harder:)  If I hit a bug while while sitting in
>>>  > my office that is one thing.  If a teacher hits a bug where the
>>>  > computers no longer connect to the server that is another thing
>>>  > entirely.
>>>  >
>>>  > On the other hand, there have been several significant improvements in
>>>  > both Sugar and Fedora over the last couple of releases.  It would be
>>>  > valuable to make those improvement available to end users.
>>>  >
>>>  > My research has indicated that education institutions find that 3
>>>  > years is the right balance between stability and improved
>>>  > functionality of new software.  Because to the newness of the Sugar 2
>>>  > years is a reasonable first round of updates due to the higher than
>>>  > normal increases in usefulness and usability.
>>>  >
>>>  > Blame and credit are important motivators in this game:( As such, if
>>>  > we fail, it is the fault of Bernie, paraguayeduca, and I for: 1)
>>>  > starting with a bad premise, 2) making bad technical decision, or 3)
>>>  > making bad operational decisions.  If we fail it will be due to the
>>>  > cooperative efforts of deployments, Sugar Labs, OLPC, and other
>>>  > interested third parties.
>>>  >
>>>  > david
>>>  > _______________________________________________
>>>  > Sugar-devel mailing list
>>>  > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>  > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>
>>> =---------------------
>>>  paul fox, pgf at laptop.org
>>>
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