[IAEP] team updates

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all,

In fact, the original request cannot be considered as a fully valid in
case of Platform Team. The http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team
page exists but Platform Team is in initiation stage and wasn't somehow
announced or requested to be a Sugar Labs Team. In any case, it is the
right moment to do that.

The purpose to create this team might be found of its mssion page
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Mission, i.e.:

    The general goal is to support Sugar doers in their regular
    behaviors within the Sugar ecosystem by providing a seamless
    environment by which to follow a common strategy. In other words,
    it is exactly about having a platform that supports Sugar doers.

    There are key differences with the existing teams:

    * Compared to the [[Activity Team]], the Platform Team does not care
      about developing any particular activities, but rather provides
      a useful software infrastructure to help people in the activity
      development process.
    * Compared with the [[Development Team]], the Platform Team does not
      care about developing the Sugar learning environment (Sucrose), but
      rather provides a useful software architecture to help as many people
      as possible to take part in the Sucrose development process.
    * Compared with the [[Infrastructure Team]], the Platform Team does
      develop some of the services that the [[Infrastructure Team]] administers.

    In particular, the Platform Team will

    * Support ''doing'' behaviors by providing useful
      [[Platform_Team/Sweets|distribution method]]s and various Sugar Doers' Kits
      (that really sounds better than the traditional SDK transcription,
      Software Developers Kit).
    * Connect doers and other learners (users) by developing services
      for a seamless infrastructure for sharing software, e.g.,
      [[Activity Library]].
    * Extend the previous two goals to non-Sugar environments, not to ''sugarize''
      them all, but rather to merge and promote Sugar software with and within
      the common [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software Free Software]
      and education ecosystems.

As you can see there is a clear difference in goals with existed teams
(mostly with development related ones). In my mind, such team needed to be
created right after Sugar Labs initiation because it is critically
important (for Sugar Labs mission, how I understand it) to provide
reliable doing platform for heterogeneous ecosystem that Sugar is, i.e.,
it might be not such in case of particular XO based deployment, but on
Sugar Labs level it is such.

For example, being an Activity Library administrator (and a technical maintainer
for now), I can say that any not pure Python activity is less (if activity
developers take care about providing all possible variants of their activity,
but it is very exhausting and unreliable way in GNU/Linux world) or more
(if activity developers just place the variant of activity that was
built in their environment, i.e., in most cases it won't work in
different cases). And that is the exact task for Platform Team that will
do a work that will be used by activity developers.

The requested roadmap for Platform Team is
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Roadmap
but it lacks of answers for:

> What does the team see as its constraints from being more successful
> in its Mission? What are you doing to try to resolve the constraint?
> What can Sugar Labs 'central' or the community do to help?

since Platform Team is in initiation team and the only issue is the lack
of contributors interested in taking part in Platform Team projects.

-- 
Aleksey